"BLOODTEETH" by Despy Boutris

Despy Boutris's writing has been published in Copper Nickel, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Currently, she serves as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Guest Editor for Palette Poetry and Frontier, and Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.

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BLOODTEETH
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I went blackberry-picking, looked down
at my index finger, & watched a wound bloom

with blood. To compare this plasma
to a flowering thing: amaryllis, orchid,

chrysanthemum. To memorize creases,
freckles, the sight of the thorn finding its way

into flesh. All day, the breeze burns
my ears, eyes blurring at the sight of sunlight

filtering through oak branches, that golden
color unbearable, the haze hard to believe

as fable. My mother organizes her top-drawer
& finds a box of my teeth. My mother

tells me love never lasts, a river dissolving
into a ravine with parched rocks. Nothing

left to drink. I call my father to say I dreamt
I swam the span of the Pacific, fled

from everything I know. He reminds me
my name is mythic—body built for saltwater,

memory spanning centuries, trident still stuck
in my spine. & what do we really have

to count on but the sea, water, the light
of the sun turning on the city? Hands

made stiff from the cold, distant smoke rising,
the scent of anise in the air.