1.
Unbearable copper-tang of orange zest
rings out in the hollows of my molars
clashing with the fluoride jacket
worn on these limestone shards
of teeth, like a wooden spoon smacking
a dented pail.
Waiting for the grassy wind outside to increase its bangings on
my window, knees screaming at a storm’s electric approach.
2.
‘Tang,’ is too broad to mean anything;
the tang I am talking about is not pure.
The tang I am talking about is not healthy,
nor natural; it is the cross between human-made
cleaning products and acidic endocarp
[the white lining of an orange’s endocarp
is actually its pubescence]. The tang
I am talking about manifests
as a steep set of metal steps, hollow and cold
to the touch; where, rain falling on,
the eyes inside, coating them
in the tears of clouds, stare at the stairwell
wobbling like the eyes of an ancient laying shot in the grass
arrow stuck through, into the tree, still quivering,
water pooling into lakes in the eyes, sitting
wiggling in the barely-blinking eyes.
We had gone outside before so I already knew the grass
and dogwood would be activating in this bracing rain.
3.
You are a giant mouth, a set of teeth buried
in big red lips, fixing to go on a walk
in the rain you can feel coming on, because
you need out of this little apartment — you get up.
You walk through the blue metal door frame.
You lock your apartment.
You try to take the elevator, but it is broken.
You walk up to the brown stairwell door.
You open it up and it slams like a refrigerator
without that rubber pad on the inside.
You are a giant mouth walking down stairs
so you are holding the rail of those stairs —
and this is a metal rail — with your hand
(which is a tooth) which scrapes along
the muted sky blue railing, the ringing of that metal
zinging along the barrel-vault arches of your mouth’s roof,
leading the way down each level of this complex (four, three,
two, one) as paint chips and metal
shavings and dust fall, layer by layer, into you (a mouth).
My animal stench was hidden time and again under the attar
of grass and dogwood — the drift of pinched skin and humidity.
4.
I woke up with an ashtray in my mouth
so brushed my teeth. I thought I remembered
something I needed to remember
but decided it wasn’t important, so when
I took a sip of what I thought was water I ended up all cringed-up so hard that all of the breath in my entire body seemed to have left through the constricted chamber of my windpipe and escaped through the pores on my torso.
I slapped my cheeks half-jokingly.
I slammed open the bathroom accidentally.
I drank from the stream in the sink.
I showered.
I drank from the stream in the shower.
I dried.
I ate from the fridge in the kitchen.
I thought about going somewhere else.
I wanted this buzzing mouth to settle.
I wanted to walk downstairs.
I wanted to walk on the pond-scum sidewalks.
My tongue was tied by conflicting flavors; I wanted out from under
the ever-heavier rain and ever-thickened grass and dogwoods.
5.
Trapped in the trauma of added acidity,
citrus and eccentricity, I stayed in bed, with electric
braces and metal fillings, metal shavings from high-speed
scrapings, the edge of a concrete wall
grinding against a flexed eyebrow,
and I wasn’t even thinking about going outside
until I decided I wanted to. I didn’t even decide
I wanted to until I wanted to. I didn’t
even think that maybe things would be
forced to a turning point: an untowelled-figure
standing in front of un-tinted apartment windows
looking at a sunset, and nothing more.
Enough rain, and you could wash away an entire self;
roof-gutter water that tastes of earth, and azaleas,
and is clear as glycerine.
