Baby Teeth

some afternoons music sways like a broken screen door
in a distant part of a house I was never a god in. it’s flooded

with marigold light & it makes sense that my milk
teeth have been traded to deep south spiritualists.

they say I was born fanged & feathered like
no child from heaven should be. a miracle

that when I lost those teeth I became human.
my feathers burned one by one each year of my life.

I’m tired of the way my mouth fills with guava
seeds like infant pearls after. give me blood

from pomegranates. I demand tears
in every screen door in the south until

they fall off their hinges or every onyx tooth
is planted in the ground around my body. wait.

let a song come first from a black storm rolling
over the still sorghum fields. I am nothing

if not determined to re-create myself as a god.
so let the birds steal my teeth from the ground

& hide them in their babies’ open beaks.
listen for the heavy stillness before the rain

& know I am waiting to become whole again.

“Baby Teeth” was first published with Palette Poetry. From Girl's Guide to Leaving by Laura Villareal. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2022 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.