Sapphire
THE RAINS
1.
I had a letter but other people had teeth.
I had gone through the wrong door at first.
It was my job that had sent me the letter
to get paid. Cheap, I mumble. The security guard
agrees. The employer too cheap to get the check
from all the places I was outsourced to
& consolidate it—too much paper work.
Easier to get me to run my behind off.
But what were people doing with the teeth?
A young man in a white shirt & dreadlocks,
an intellectual or accountant, he hands
the man a tooth. They hand it back.
It’s too perfect, the woman, but it was a man nods
approving as he carves into the enamel with a nail.
He will get his money.
The lights are fluorescent.
Behind me the line grows.
2.
In another room there is a low divan against
one wall, a brass day bed without sheets against
the other wall. I take papers from a black
patent leather bag which state what the government will give
you
in return for your mouth—
$877.00 a month.
They have adjusted the figure
in a corner
there is a bamboo tray with a hundred
little bottles of perfume. I hold onto your words.
In the bottom of the bag like flattened pearls,
except for the black holes on the ventral surface,
two teeth.
3.
The rains are torrential now.
A man bounces through the parking lot
bare white back gleaming like a fish’s belly.
All the headlights of all the cars come on at once.
Hey, our lives are in the back seat!
Hey! Hey! Don’t leave without us!
But I am the only one here.
The only one willing to walk.
The one holding your teeth.
