The Zingara Project

Tag: Forage

  • Teeth by Sara Eddy

    The neighbors’ child wanders into my yard
    unannounced to play on the old swing set.
    I know her mama will be along, but I go out
    with a sigh to make sure she doesn’t
    break her head or wander further.
    I say hello.
    She doesn’t answer; she is full of beans
    and evil intent–she is like Loki’s best girl
    and she needs watching carefully.
    I say whatcha doin today
    and she sucks her lips into her mouth
    around her teeth
    preparing for something, sparking
    her eyes at me like she’s ready
    to leap at my throat
    I take a step back as
    she pulls those lips apart and holds
    them gaping with her fingers
    exposing her fangs
    so she can threaten me with the real reason
    she has ventured to my yard:
    a loose tooth.
    She puts her tongue against it and pops
    it toward me, letting it hang on a thread
    dangling like a dead mouse by its tail.
    With a wave of nausea I leave her
    to her trickster god’s care
    and scurry to the house
    feeling curious distress. Why,
    why are teeth so upsetting when
    they aren’t in our mouths? Fallen out
    teeth and punched out teeth
    pulled teeth and rotted teeth
    the roots of nerve and blood
    going back perhaps ages and ages
    to when this would be a death sentence:
    You lose your teeth, you cannot eat, you die.

    —

    Sara Eddy is a writing instructor and tutoring mentor at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts.  Her poems have appeared recently in Forage, Parks & Points, and Damfino, along with Terrapin Press’ anthology The Donut Book.  She lives in Amherst, Mass., with three teenagers, a black cat, and a blind hedgehog.



  • Mirror Image by Dilantha Gunawardana

    You look at the glow of the super moon,
    At a flawless circle, epitomizing perfection.

    So was by legend, Cleopatra, and by myth, Helen of Troy.
    We all like to see some beauty in us, outer or inner,

    Like that feeling which sponsors effervescent mirth,
    From a one-way transaction with a roadside beggar,

    Mirrors are ubiquitous; in the bedroom, above the sink,
    On the outside of a car, some hand-held, some hung in the soul.

    All are badgering truth machines, inescapable, almost
    Like the nagging sun during the daylight hours,

    And mirror images are far from idyllic sculptures,
    Only an offering of honesty, of a fine glass-like reality,

    A reflection that you look at, either directly or with tilting pupils,
    In a myriad of deft angles, gazing at a familiar creature,

    Who fails to meet up to your high expectations.
    Still, you graft a tongue-full of flattery,

    Harvesting an eyeful of dishonesty from a mirror’s face,
    Oblivious that deception is like a daffodil,

    A blooming Narcissus.

    Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He moonlights as a poet. Dilantha wrote his first poem at the ripe age of 32 and now has more than 1700 poems on his blog. His poems have been accepted/published in Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry and Ravens Perch, among others. He blogs at – https://meandererworld. wordpress.com/