CAT LEECHES / THERE IS MORE SPERM IN THE NIGHT SKY THAN STARS IN THE BACK OF MY THROAT
OR
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself and drench them in spit.
i once made love to a woman who pulled a molar out of her gums and inserted it into my ass cheek / i must admit that her mouth was over-crowded / there seemed to be more than teeth in there / more teeth than you could possibly expect / more teeth than bacteria or continents / but when we had dinner / i found the imperfection / charming / a sign of good dental health / i wondered what insurance did she have / did she take probiotics / i thought of the dead in vesuvius’s maw / and their excellent bone structure / would someone look at her corpse / and marvel, just as i did once (for a different body) and am doing now (with her body) / a thousand years in the future / school-children, who for the rest of the day, could only think about her teeth? / still blooming with fluoridation / and worms frozen in the arctic for 41,000 years / thawed and flash-frozen again / injected into Crest 3D Whitening Toothpaste / still trapped in the perfect mausoleum of her mouth? / when is it okay for children to stare plainly at the dead / and not at least, pretend to avert their eyes? / i myself have a few gaps in my genome / which have long made me / self-conscious / my corpse will look like a corpse / i cover my mouth with my hands whenever i talk or chew / She gave me a floral band-aid to cover the wound / the flowers were generic: they resembled no known species / what i mean is / they weren’t a trademark / you couldn’t sell them / flowers only for the dispossessed / I wondered how did i even know they were flowers? / “No one will know it is there, but me,” she said / she said shesaidand said… / we then proceeded to make love / but i was no longer sure of this coupling / she pressed her fingers into my skin / just a little too hard and without kindness / in the way someone might squash an ant / what i mean is: this wasn’t a body / she wanted to caress / i mean is: maybe she saw insects all over me / she wanted to kill them / before they sunk below the skin / stole away her tooth to a secret / compartment in my body / not even i knew about / i did not like this type of love-making / i did not yet know what type of love-making i liked / i am an uninspired lover / just hungry / i forgot about the incident for a while / until i had sex with a man / he was an alcoholic / this is his defining feature / he accused my ass of biting his thigh maliciously / he brought photos of his wound to court / and he was allowed to whip me publicly / in front of both our families / twenty times / his marriage recovered / beautifully / i had not known he was married.
Cat Ingrid Leeches is a writer, adjunct, and editor. Their work has appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. They have a chapbook out with Garden-Door Press, and can be found on twitter at Lizard_Eyes.