Elegy with Teeth

in high school I never opened my mouth

but was voted somehow best smile

my senior year I had my mother’s teeth

and my father’s teeth I saw them in the mirror

my father’s mouth a fuse my mother’s mouth

a garden I watched his mouth I watched

his mouth a lot at dinner I kept silent

as my father told me Black people learned

to cheat the government for handouts

his hand was clenched around a fork

at the lumberyard the man didn’t smile

the man didn’t not smile either my father

smiled after saying the way I see it before

saying he felt discriminated against I was

taught so much by my father I would

later unlearn I was taught in high school

the history of our fathers all the forefathers

but not their sins I was taught

George Washington’s teeth were wood

and I imagined the pines outside

the classroom window but not the history

of the bodies that hung from them

Ray Porter August 1891 charge

not given Two unnamed men September

John Brown October charged with

testifying against whites Sam Wright

October Two unnamed men February

charged with incendiarism April

April April April I can imagine

my great-grandfather there beneath

the branches his smile lit like a torch

not even dressed in his white robes this time

this violence was a social occasion for him

at night before he’d wake up and go to work

at Fannin County High School I survived

staying silent which I later learned was

selfish like old George the bastard

his teeth were never made of wood

they were made of slaves’ teeth dead or

alive still I wasn’t sure and once in a museum

many years later I saw those teeth next to

a tuft of hair elements of the body

devoid of a body the teeth set curved

in a lead jaw with springs that helped them

open that held the teeth in place

against the gums and from the other side

of the glass the teeth looked like they were

trying to open but were still

after hundreds of years held shut by

those who forced them to smile