6/2/2020 Poetry by Aimee McCague Fred von Graf CC Receding Gums Murphy Last night you dreamt you lost your teeth You put your hand in your mouth Thumb against forefinger And with hardly a pull They came loose One by one You released them from your bleeding gums The cold air whistling through the gaping cavities As the blood dripped down on the dirty sink And you looked at your reflection in the cracked mirror The colour drained from your face And rubbed your swollen gums together until they ached This morning the electric toothbrush whirred As you removed the creeping plaque And glided cautiously over the aging fillings And tender palate You spooled the minty floss around your finger And sawed it up and down between your teeth You imagined the clink Of each tooth falling onto the porcelain And the rotting molars turning to dust in your mouth As you crunched down and chewed on the crumbling bone You picture this throughout the day Every day As your knees bounce up and down And people ask if you’re okay, you look nervous Your tongue always probing Swearing that this time you felt a movement A slight wobble A sign of things to come Maybe it’s the cigarettes that made your gums this way The ‘just two a day’ – When you wake up And before you go to bed That quickly became ten a day One when you arrive at a place And one every time you leave You don’t want to go for a checkup To your childhood dentist He’ll see the nicotine stains And you think you’ll disappoint him You rinse and repeat The same routine every night Your fingers pulling your lips down To look at your gums in the mirror Red raw and inflamed Creeping further back each time Incrementally Naked bone weary and exposed Mad Dog We climbed the steel steps with beer in our bellies And anticipation in our thumping hearts The man took our tokens and we sat down on the squeaky plastic seats Saying how much we loved each other Posing for pictures on our phones before it began They waited while others got on and we looked around – The drawings on the walls like snapshots of our own nightmares Monsters coming out from the shadows - Freddy Krueger grabbing at our throats And all around us sorority girls with 1980’s haircuts Their last breath a synthy scream It started off slow - our circular chariots making a full rotation At the hands of the distracted attendant The music was like our blood – heightened – Awakening those memories from not so long ago We had climbed over that wall into a place beyond From something base and tacky into something more And as we fell into one another The music becoming faster, harder - our cheeks raw and tasting of metal The faces on the walls started to change We spun faster and the faces creeped closer towards us Bathed in a red haze, grotesque, ever changing - until they slowed It was as though we slowed with them, although the world still spun outside They grew larger and sprouted bodies, greeting us with icy cold smiles A hand reached out and I reached back But it withered and wasted away Then I looked up and saw my own eyes staring back They grew fainter, the colour draining from their irises My throat ached to shout out But there was no-one to hear I looked at my friends and realized I was on my own They saw nothing but their own arms in the air, screaming and cheering for life The faces were gone too Replaced by a warmth enveloping me in its arms Though the ride slowed and the strobe lights ceased their dance I felt a chill descend - an icy hand on my shoulder A snarling dog Teeth bared at my heels. Aimee McCague is a writer from Monaghan, Ireland. She received an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, London and a BA in English and Spanish from NUI Galway. Aimee has had short stories published in NUIG’s Ropes publication, as well as having a story shortlisted for the James Plunkett Short Story Award. She enjoys writing short stories and attending poetry nights in Dublin. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2024
Categories |