Smile

It is 1:30 pm and
I just brushed my teeth
for the third time today.
I have this obsession.
With my teeth.
When they don’t feel clean,
It is impossible
for me
to think about anything else.
I buy my toothbrushes in bulk.
I keep extras at my friends’ houses.
Just in case.
When I can’t brush after lunch,
I cannot concentrate in class,
all I can do is run my tongue
along my incisors
over and over,
for hours.
Cringing at their
grimy, plaquey texture.

My father has had dentures for thirty-nine years.
He says
they pulled his teeth out
one by one
with an old pair of pliers.
He says
it wasn’t the beer stains,
it wasn’t the rotting
brought on by all those cigarettes he used to puff.
He says
it was because he never
brushed his teeth enough,
especially before he went to bed.
When I was seven,
he told me
if I ever went to bed
without brushing,
the plaque would swim through my mouth,
grind away the enamel on my molars,
eat their way through my gums.
Take away my little white smile
while I slept.
He reached into his mouth, pulled out his
top row of teeth.
He held up what, in his mouth, had been a
perfect set of pearly whites.
But sitting there in his hand,
upside-down,
dripping with saliva and spit,
they were nothing but the
porcelain pickets of a freshly-painted fence.
He smiled at me without those teeth and he sighed.
Is this the kind of mouth you want?
I shook my head.
I knew he was referring to the mouth on his face,
but I could not take my eyes off of the one in his hand.
It’s jagged little pickets were smiling at me too.

Sixteen years later,
and I still can’t look away.
I cannot recall a single night since I was seven
when I have not brushed my teeth before going to bed.
But sometimes, in the middle of the day,
when I try to take a nap,
I will lie awake in bed,
my eyes closed, unable to sleep.
I see that hand,
The pearls, the picket fence
sitting there in my father’s palm.
Smiling, laughing, chattering away at me.
Mouthing the words.
Telling me I had better not fall asleep
without brushing,
because if I do, those plaques will come
and they will devour my mouth.
If I do, I will wake up an hour later with
yellow teeth.
Gums full of holes.
A rotten mouth.
A smile like my father’s.

RED

Behind my house there is a rickety wooden garage.
Its walls are made of railroad ties.
It is held up by two long poles because
it leans to the North and has fallen over twice.
Inside sits a Massey-Ferguson tractor
that has been in my family for generations.
It used to be red, but has long since faded to a rusty pink.

My father’s father was apparently a farmer, just like his father,
and his father, and his father.
Just like my father.
A full line of Gurneys
plowing dirt
cultivating land
planting seed
fertilizing fields
weeding rows of corn
cutting acres and acres and acres of green grass
on that same red Massey-Ferguson tractor.
Each year, come harvest time,
I can see them all,
a patriarchal line of faceless men
with names I have heard but a few times:
Oscar Leslie, William Francis, and John,
riding there
behind my father
on that tractor
calling me, beckoning me to join them.
To lift a bale of hay, place it on the wagon,
help them stack their crop
behind my house,
where it will stay until winter.
Then when it is too cold for the earth to do her own work,
they will use it to sustain the lives
of beasts they will later kill.

My sister now lives on 500 West
in the house my mother grew up in.
The house has been gutted twice, expanded, remodeled, excavated,
painted, stuccoed, covered in rock.
But at its core is a tiny adobe foundation made of red brick.

My mother’s father was once a sheepherder.
But when my mother was only two,
he gave up his ranch
in Panguitch to move his family to Lehi.
Only God knows why.
When they got here, he built them
a red adobe brick house to live in.
With time, the red of those bricks had faded.
And when I was only two,
my grandmother ordered
that the house be repainted.
Only she knows why.
My mother, my aunts, and my uncle,
My father, my sisters, and my brother
took paintbrushes and rollers and they coated that house
with the brightest red paint I have ever seen.
The pigment sunk deep into the thirsty adobe bricks,
and when they had finished, I looked
at that house with my two-year-old eyes
and saw a giant candy apple.
I watched as
the ghost of my grandfather, Glen Orton,
walked across the lawn and picked it up
as if he were plucking it from a tree.
He opened his wide mouth and swallowed
that candy-apple house in a single bite.
When he had finished, he winked at my grandmother,
and he was gone.

Each time I pass that old rickety shed behind my house
I hear whispers, the voices of two men
I have never met.
Oscar and Glen.
They tell me
to repaint my sister’s house,
They tell me
to keep driving that tractor,
to keep cutting the grass behind my house,
to keep spilling the blood of our cattle,
They tell me
to spread that blood all over the Massey-Ferguson,
to make that tractor red again.
Because for some reason,
they expect me to keep them alive.

My Father's Feet

My father’s feet are not sixty-nine years old.
Somehow they are at least thirty years younger than
the rest of him.
My father’s feet have carried him
up and down the railroad tracks by our house,
through his fields of wheat and corn and hay,
along the Jordan River and the old Willow Creek,
up Bald Mountain,
across the countless dirt roads of his youth,
and the paved streets of old age.

Every morning for as long as I can remember
my father has gripped in his right hand,
an old walking stick
that he cut
from a willow in our back yard.
He takes that stick
and he follows those feet.
I am certain those feet can walk on their own,
and that they alone know the way.
My father could take that
morning walk with his eyes closed.
When he returns home,
he removes his shoes, but not his socks, and
he immediately slides those feet into a pair of brown slippers.

I have seen
my father’s bare feet
only a few times.
On top they are pale. White.
Like a ghost, a spiritual apparition.
They draw my eyes toward the ground,
haunting my thoughts,
holding me there.
Lost in their trance, I cannot look away.
Those feet are not wrinkled.
They are not shriveled or discolored.
While the rest of my father has aged,
His feet have remained untouched.
Time has simply never stooped that low.
The bottoms are pruny. Pink.
I imagine they feel just as soft, just as smooth
as they did the day he was born.
They are pure, unblemished.
Not a callous or a scar.
No warts.
They never hurt.
The skin is never dry.

My father’s feet are his most protected and prized possession.
They are what hold him to the ground.
They are his constant movement,
his road to change,
his ever-increasing steady pace.
They are the driving force behind his dark desires.
Those feet are what keep my father alive.

On Writing

When I grow up, I wanna be
just like Steve.
Because let’s face it, I can’t write
worth a shit either.
You see, with Steve it’s all about
rabid dogs, creepy clowns, scary shit,
shitty shit.
He can’t write anything else.
And I sure can’t write anything else.
I wouldn’t know an original idea if it
hit me over the head
with a shovel.
You see, I can’t write because
every word that comes out of this pen is
Dad
line break
Dad
Ex-girlfriend
Dad
line break
You.
I mean, who farted right?
I’m so sick of writing about my ex-girlfriend.
I’m so sick of writing about my dad.
And I am so fucking sick of writing about you.
But the only decent thing I can write is you.
So I’ll keep going.
Just like the King.
Cliché, after cliché, after cliché…
Broken heart, after poor family relationship, after romantic obsession…
Schizo writer, after haunted mansion, after axe-murderer…
Maybe some day one of us will come up with something new.
Because come on Steve, pig’s blood at the prom?
Seriously?
It’s been done.

My Favorite Tie

My favorite thing about Sunday
is picking out a tie for church.
I have just under ninety of them.
A purple one with Aztec warriors on it.
One that’s got blue and white stripes
that I bought at a yard sale in California.
A yellow one from my cousin’s wedding.
Some of my older ones have cartoon characters on them.
Scooby Doo, that cucumber from Veggie Tales.
I even have a black one with the red letters
AFI patched on it.
Of these eighty some odd ties,
I probably wear about ten.
But before I can make any sort of decision,
I have to look at every last one of them.

A little over two years ago
a girl sent me a package for my birthday.
The package was late because
she had forgotten when my birthday actually was.
But there were four ties in that box,
so I quickly forgave her.
Two of those ties were ugly.
The other two were brown.
One had a bunch of little red moose on it.
And the other had tan stripes.
This brown tie with tan stripes has been my favorite ever since.

My tie collection has become so big,
I had to get me one of those
electric tie-holder things
that only weirdoes have.
It’s actually pretty cool, because I can
push a button and watch as
red and blue and green and grey
and pink and purple and white
and brown and black and orange
ties go whizzing past me in a circular motion.
Sometimes choosing a tie is enough to make me dizzy.
It’s almost always enough to make me late.

So this girl,
the one that sent me the ties,
I loved her.
I was thinking marriage.
She loved me too, but
she was thinking Master’s Degree.
I told her to go; I wanted her to be happy.
So after a short-lived long-distance
relationship,
She moved to France to earn her piece of paper.
She’s in Ohio now, finishing up her Master’s there.
I called her last Saturday.
She was in a department store.
So glad I called.
She was picking out a Valentine’s Day present for her boyfriend,
and she didn’t have a clue what to get him.
I make a few suggestions.
A shirt—Out.
She just got him one for his birthday.
A CD?—Nope.
Movie?—Nah.
A ridiculous amount of heart shaped chocolate—Out.
He’s diabetic.
I suggest some sugar-free stuff.
Tell her to give him the sugar later.
She laughs.
Then she sees the ties.
She says he just got a new suit,
so that would be perfect.
We decide on a blue one, and she heads for the checkout.
On the way she tells me that
she’s never bought a tie for anyone but me.
I tell her to take it back, to buy him another shirt.
She laughs again, but this time
I’m not joking.
I want to know that I still have that part of her.
Just that one little part.
The part that buys ties.
She gets to the check stand and says she has to go.
Thanks for your help, she says. I love you. Goodbye.

The next morning, I watch as my ties go around and around.
They seem to fly right out of the closet, encircling me
in a world of insecurity.
I know which tie I want, but I can’t just pick it out.
So I wait for it to come around again and again and again.
Finally I reach out and grab the brown tie with the tan stripes.
As I slowly tie it around my neck,
I look in the mirror and I see that I am wearing
someone else’s favorite tie.

Love Poem

Your flat chest is like a
smooth, succulent apricot,
a plump peach after dehydration.

On A Sunday

The pastor
He spits out his gum.
He bangs the pulpit and
reads a passage from the gospel of Big Poppa E.
His devout followers, we each take a turn.
Poppa tells us how he crosses the street, afraid of snipers.
He’s always worried that the person behind him at the movie theater will
blow his brains out.
He does this to himself.
Paranoid.
Masochist.
Freak.

Later, from the first epistle of Palahniuk,
we read of his travels to the podunk
Testy Festy in Missoula, Montana.
Souvenir shops with homemade dildos.
Can’t find a human penis? Use a cow’s.
The men, they slap women in the face with their hard-ons.
The women, they bite the hanging testicles off of moving motorcycles.
Biggest bite wins.
They do this to themselves.
Perverts.
Masochists.
Hicks.

Our congregation of five,
we gather here
to feed our unnatural desire for something.
Searching for a god we only find in words.
To worship him.
The god of pen.
The god of paper.
The goddess of ink
and life-long poverty.
Big Poppa, he has this parable
about writers lining up outside the welfare center
needing rent, food stamps, coffee, life.
We do this to ourselves.
Believers.
Masochists.
Writers.