Stories with Teeth in Them

ANDREW BORGSTROM

Enamel; Or, My Father Propped His Head on the Discovery of the Wheel

I could smell horseradish and taste my palate. I couldn’t say pillow yet, but I could hear it. I could drag a pillow down the hallway like a cavewoman by the hair, a pillow cavewoman with pillowcase hair. My father took the cavewoman from my hands and dug her heels into her teeth.

Dentin; Or, Before My Father Painted Everything Red

My mother painted everything green. She fell like a new form of old rain. My father danced beneath her with tongue exposed. He licked her pure bones. Then he licked his proud teeth.

Pulp Cavity; Or, Honesty

Mother asked for his where it comes from and what he does, or something. Father said a word called honesty, which sounded like a piñata, and so mother bat at him until his teeth stained the floor. Then she sat back and watched me create a shirt-basket with my pajama top and scramble for the teeth-shaped candy.

Gingival Crevice; Or, The Crumbling

Mother entered the apartment, got down on her knees, bent her face towards the windowsill, bit into the wood ledge, and lifted her big-boned body off the ground with her teeth and the balls of her feet.

Gingiva; Or, Buoyant

A boy picked up an ant. A baby corpse bobbed on the water. A sober woman smiled though her heart wanted out of her face. My mother ground her teeth to stubs. My brother had no teeth. I bit the ant in half.

Periodontium; Or, A Near Death Experience

“Hey, crow, hey, you motherfucker, I’m resting here,” my father said, as he kicked at the bird that wasn’t actually a crow and tried falling back to sleep on yesterday’s pulled teeth.

Pulp Canal; Or, My Parents, After the Amputations

The armless man folded his stumps into the legless woman’s armpits. The legless woman tucked her stumps into the armless man’s waistband. They interlocked their remaining teeth and danced two-headed.

Cementum; Or, The Last Breakfast

I poured my parents’ cremains into their favorite cereal bowls as instructed in their refrigerator wills. One tooth fell from each urn as prophesied in their wallpaper diaries. I strung the teeth on cow leather and wore them around my neck. As I walked, the teeth beat against each other, but also slowly chewed into my chest cavity.