Before the extraction, she had to smash it in three pieces
Each shard she withdrew, bloody and sharp from the drool
Ranging them on the tray like Boadicea’s arrowheads
With each dental invasion, my mouth became an atrocity
From that barnacled Martello molar at the back,
To the gleaming high rise implants that never settled right
When the wedding snapper said cheese my lips drew back
Saying aggressive chimp in alpha male stand off
Not what the bride’s father considered civil or eugenic
In a moonlit defection my tongue found an American mouth
For a year or two until her mocking incisors withdrew
Now it prods about existentially, like Bowie in Tescos
Maybe I’ll follow Grandpa Tommy with his clacking palate
When he yawned his maw became The Scream by Munch
His loose choppers as adrift as a gull in the ocean dark
He left them grinning from the whisky glass by his coffin
Before they planted him under a marble headstone
Part of a set made for somebody else on the NHS
Shortlisted in the 2013 Charles Causley Prize
Mark Fiddes 