I dreamt our parents gave a lecture we expected
to be on teeth: Mother with the blue-orange
blow torch and a violent, spinning crucible; Father
with the soft-tongued secret of the Cusp of Carabelli.
But Mother didn’t speak and Dad wrote endless code
on the green board. He said, Now then, doesn’t that
make sense? And we agreed. No one’s ever liked
to disappoint him. He clapped his hands and a cloud
of white dust spread through the room. And that’s how
it happens, my little ones, he said, pointing to his tidy
characters, that’s how and why everything decays.
Katherine Fallon’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Juked, Apple Valley Review, Colorado Review, and Best New Poets 2019, among others. Her chapbook, The Toothmakers’ Daughters, is available through Finishing Line Press. She teaches at Georgia Southern University and shares domestic space with two cats and her favorite human, who helps her zip her dresses.
