i smiled & the mirror told me my teeth had become
corn kernels-- yellow blushing from the big
metal pot on the stove, each one sweet & ready to
burst. 4th of july 5 years ago we were sitting
on the wooden porch eating corn & potatoes
freckled with old-bay seasoning. there were
lobsters in the mix & your mom called it 
frogsmore stew, which  was really just boiling
odds & ends with salt & red seasoning, poured
out on a picnic table covered with newspaper. 
i want to like messy food but the only kind of messy
food i like is fresh fruit, like biting
a nectarine & having the sunny orange juice
make a horizon down to my elbows. the earth tilts
& boiling water makes the meat come off
our bones, tender & white like crustaceans. i didn't
want to eat them, the lobsters, but you said
they were delicious & that we should try everything
once. dunked in ceramic dishes of butter, i let
you snap-open the shells for me-- their blank eyes
staring forward, emptied of rocky Maine shoreline 
up the street still hushing us, telling us to
chew more quietly out of respect for the dead. 
i'm still biting across the cob like a clip
of ammunition. take my teeth, god. lodge them 
in husks & grow them in fields behind my parent's house.
this is what happens when you let boys love 
your body into an extension of his, 
there are you are feeding me/feeding you, 
newsprint dripping & stamping the red lobster legs
we won't read the news of the hurricanes 
boiling each continent one by one like great big 
skin-peeling potatoes. i take kin with the lobsters.
recalling you cracking my clothes off for me &
asking me what i wanted. 
a lack or deficiency of something
for white teeth. for a great big metal pot.