Elegy for the Spoken Word

Pia Baur

I keep dreaming that my teeth are falling out:
Sometimes all at once–
Starting at one end, they seem to pull and slip out swiftly,
like a ribbon unfurling;
like the inner lining of a coat,
stitches failing to keep them
reined in.

Other times, I chew and my jaw rolls against a molar
that comes loose. And one by one, they all come out,
getting bumped off my mandible.
I line them up on a window sill,
looking like sloppy little ceramic tiles when I string them back together
and paste them into my gums, though
they don’t stay neatly, but slip out of place
as dried glue deposits into the pockets of my mouth
and my bite marks leave crooked tracks in every space
they go.

Some nights, someone appears in my dreams
and advice is dispensed to me:
Words aren’t cheap when breath is short.
But nothing ever follows because words swell
up in my oral cavity,
My crowns burst off in violent splinters and
I look at myself spitting out chunks of enamel
in rapid succession, making erratic clatter
when they

fall on the wooden
floor.