ACTG from Woven by Hazukashi Studios Kyoto

Wisdom Teeth



Something had to give that summer
and did—as you pissed away paychecks and woke
sweating each day. Broiling Baltimore! Broken glass
on the pavement and knee-high weeds. By noon
no one, not even the homeless, got caught
on those sidewalks but you, already on your way
to the Mount Royal Tavern. Then home again
to sleep, your two-room single strewn
with greasy wrappers and tall-boys, still
a hundred degrees by evening.

You painted an old professor’s porch
for rent. In June, you’d seen your mother
with suitcase descending for good the stairs
of your childhood home, your father at the table’s head,
mute, dazed and undone. Simmering and grim
on a four-month bender—your girlfriend
away—you ranted till they disconnected
the phone and withheld your TA.

In August you went under, toward something
like sleep, nitrous oxide’s “twilight,” the surgeon’s whisper
booming your ear, rubber fingers and hard instruments
pressed out your drool, and then a crunching sound, cranial-deep,
like a phonebook ripping apart. They stuffed you
with cotton, and there, when you came to, fresh
from New York was a girl you’d almost marry
caressing your cheek, the blinded room, her parents’,
air-conditioned for sleep, as your mind finally dulled
under Percocet’s liquid heaven. Why go there now, why hold on
to those bloody molars, your ingrown and bone-aching
twenty-something teeth?
Peter Ramos from Television Snow Blaize/Vox Books (used w/ permission)

• Latin
• World
• afro
• electronica
• world music
• Kyoto