veneers
veneers by Vega Mouton (@vega.mouu)
this is a speech about teeth.
it’s not sweet, certainly not upbeat.
i would not say it’s clean or straight like most,
or consider it a project to boast
about to your peers, or use to peer out to the world,
and it’s not floraled out or
decorative like wallpaper
in this facade on which i’ve bestowed
my own name.
this speech about teeth,
it is about life, not about. me?
i think if plaque lacks the density of our destinies
and the ways in which we define them,
cavities can only strengthen
gravity.
and i’ll drill into this idea of teeth
i mean truth.
sorry, i messed up, i know. it’s rude.
my teeth aren’t people, obviously.
still, sleek metal bars bind them in place, like
humankind, akin to the ones on man’s race.
filled with brackets and
self-ligating doors,
troubadours spitting songs of mothers and fathers.
but, why bother? why care? if the cold glare of
chromium and nickel keeps trickling down my eyes
until my cries of reality will ring through? this
speech about teeth,
it is NOT about me, for it is more about you.
there will always be teeth
in the mouth of this universe.
what matters is how they’re used.
so sit pretty, converse!
you cannot show pride or happiness.
just ride senseless the sorrows of old grudges,
don’t let those judges dictate their own fate.
this speech about teeth,
is it about you, is it about me?
no. no it is definitely about we.
if we could let friends meet ends together,
tie tight the loose knots
that just never felt quite as right.
collect the collective whole
and fill the deep hole where our
sanity lies under stone graves.
where lies lay, craved by
the true story, one packed under dirt.
hurt annotations and dead indentations
rule literacy, but true liberty
comes from our synergy.
from chromium and nickel,
from our mothers and fathers,
from the bars put in place
by our own exploiting race
from that race we will never win
from the sins we preach loud
to the mass of people
who are crooning to a false eulogy.
because this speech, the one
not about teeth,
it’s about the truth,
and the answers i still have not found,
within me.
Vega is a 17 year old from Baltimore, Maryland, and she has grown up loving all of the arts - singing, dancing, writing, theater, and more. She loves to read and share all kinds of poetry.
