Teeth and Toothbrush

This one’s so fluffy it’s almost hazardous.
Fills my mouth with foam. A submarine
in a domestic fish tank, or trying to get a double bass
through a car door. I never feel I’ve been swimming
if my eyes don’t puff and sting.

It’s almost like drowning, scratching the surface,
pulling teeth out, more than anything.
I’m going to be left with these little grooves,
the sides of ashtrays, if I’m not careful.
My father in law dates in pyjamas. Churning
snow tires, a cowboy with a lasso,
a terrified salmon about to be canned.

Dates in lilac (in pastel), and maddeningly
statuesque. Bats questions (somewhere between
an earlobe and an armadillo, an uppity breath,
switched off.) Description, address,
hail, oak, breath, oak, breath.

Notwithstanding, stomach heaves into evening,
beaks scrubbed with red soap, necks.
Brace through jagged leaves, television,
the back of the company van. This paste
dissolves in a spruce-risk, rewriting
smile design manuals: a kind of yacht,
slashed sail, soil to weigh it down.
All I want is sparkly, luminous, small teeth,
and a meaningless tongue.