two poems
by Naomi Bess Leimsider
Lifers
The other lifers and I have grown together over the expanse
of our long, long sentence.
Serving our time in this way has altered
all other possible trajectories.
Time is being, has been, wasted.
Committed first, fused, then planted. Both meat and vegetable,
we should still be hungry and hungrier.
Others are omnivorous; we must have appetites, too!
Once growing, then grown,
now alive and unalive in, around,
and past the time that inevitably passes. It’s rough going
when we get going, but we keep each other
on course with the thrill, the pull,
of being just good enough, so close to in the pocket.
The heady deep pleasure of the promise
of sameness: we are this way every day.
Lifers are careful, lest we forget -- and are forgotten –
thus lose our spots in the great order of things.
The other lifers and I
make sure to correct all mistakes
and live within said tight spot of corrections.
We seek out contests, small competitions,
that keep us revved up, ready to go. Something, anything,
to do again and again. We live
where we have always lived, which is, of course,
a failure of a sort. The shame
of how we will always be right here, right here.
Do lifers get to start all over again?
We do not get to start
all over again. If we could, would we
rip ourselves from our tight and tighter bonds with
the solid ground, with each other?
For one more chance would we allow ourselves revealed --
splayed open, malleable like clay, slippery like jelly?
If only we could have
switched sides, we might have molded ourselves silly.
Time is being, has been, wasted.
We should have done it different. If only we
had done it different.
We wanted to leave, once, too! But if we go back for ourselves,
like saviors, we will only find ourselves
the way we left ourselves.
Old Mouth
Am I already into this? I guess I am. Push that fat needle in my gums so I feel it up
under the upper receding flesh where it pokes just a little, hurts
just a little. I’ve been here before. More and more must be repaired. The dentist asks:
Is this what you signed up for? The dentist says being a dentist
is hard work what with the trying to fix this and that and the trying to replace what
doesn’t grow back. However, what can be endured must be endured,
isn’t that right? That’s what grown-ups really want for children, isn’t that right? If I
think things are bad now, I should just wait, just wait, for the tinny taste
of time like old metal, which is when it shows its real metal face. How it all will leech,
seep, into the murky depths of my blood-brain barrier through cracks
in my old, stained teeth. It seems I have been enjoying the bittersweet high of heavy
metal poisoning, but now I must make way, make way, for the
repairs. Some of the people I once knew are dead. Their teeth preserved for all time,
marked safe from further decay, but discolored, forever, from
broken down bacteria. All that’s left, I guess, is the small dream of composite
replacing amalgam, so fresh and smooth like brand new
plastic. Teeth go not so much yellow-brown but gray-silver like a bubbly, sparkling
mercury mixture in saliva. This too can be arrested -- everything
for a price – and returned to milk teeth scrubbed whiteness. There will be the familiar
soreness from sliced open tongue tucked in constantly chewed up
cheeks, but I haven’t yet held even one neglected tooth -- still sharp but rotted-- from
the inside out. Ridges exposed, sensitive to cold. My hazy reflection,
spotty and shadowed, in the dentist’s fun house mirror shows unprotected roots closer
than they should appear. Perhaps this has all been just figment:
one more consequence of the alloy’s poison. Perhaps my imagination has always been
the alloy’s poison. How would I even know? So I will let the dentist
do his hard work desperately reversing damage. Let the dentist do his hard, hard work
by the shrill sound of the porcelain drill. Am I numb? I bite
my tongue. The dentist says it will grow back. A little time and all will be fine. Nothing
more to do but open the door for big transitions, which is okay
because I’ve clearly run out the clock on prizes to win, and, besides, I have never been
a winner. Ahead of everything, but also way, way behind. I thought
there weren’t going to be any more contests for me, but there are, suddenly, so many
unanswered questions: Am I burning fat at rest? Am I
smoothing uneven, deepening lines? Am I really going for it even this late? Yes, always,
always, so hectic, so busy, but I’d better make my decisions
quick and dirty because this rough, ravaged face isn’t getting any younger. Boy crazy
once, but I wouldn’t get a lot of dates looking like
this. The dentist says being a dentist means he’ll never run out of work. Never age
out. For him, the mechanics of fixing, filling, are forever. What a
life! What a life he must lead! Every morning, forever, he gets to begin again.
The dentist asks: am I relaxed, ready to give in?
Photo of Naomi Bess Leimsider
BIO: Naomi Bess Leimsider’s poetry book, Wild Evolution, was published in June 2023, and she has a poetry chapbook, At The End of My Bones, forthcoming in Winter 2026. She has been a finalist for the Acacia Fiction Prize and the Saguaro Poetry Prize, and, in 2022, she received a Pushcart Prize nomination for fiction. She has published poems and short stories in numerous journals, including Mid-Atlantic Review, Branches, Ellipsis, Heavy Feather Review, Mantis, Booth, Syncopation Literary Journal, On the Seawall, Rogue Agent Journal, Hole in the Head Review, Quarterly West, and The Adirondack Review.