A Poem on the Diseases of the Teeth

Some stains aren’t moral,

Metaphorical.

Some stains are just plaque.

Some poems aren’t about

What poems are about.

Some are working verse.

1833,

Solyman Brown poured

Out rhyming couplets,

In imitation

Of the previous

Century’s fashion,

For eighty pages—

Dentologia,

A brick of cantos—

Poet laureate

Of dentistry—but

The weird poetry

Isn’t in the forced

Orthodontic verse

But in the footnotes

By another man,

And even then not

In the notes per se,

But in how each note

Behaves as a gloss

For the obvious

Meaning of the verse.

One verse tells parents

To leave milk teeth be,

Let unobstructed

Nature do the rest,

Whereupon the note

Informs us that those

Who live in small towns

Have a lower rate

Of mortality

From dentition,

Happy Villages!

All poems should get this

Scholarly treatment

A la The Waste Land,

But at the pleasure

Of each footnoter,

Whatever the lines

Suggest to a mind,

Let the readers write

Their peculiar notes,

Lyric fan fiction

If you like, so that

Any poem might have

Contesting versions

Of explanations

That win by virtue

Of bizarre surprise.

Forget the teachers.

Let the readers play.