ICE agents in Minneapolis after shooting. Image: Wikimedia Commons
by Faith Van Horne
They killed Good and Pretti in the street,
that cannot be a coincidence.
Noem the gnome says it had to happen—
death had to take the place of life.
My tongue palpates the newly dug cavern
in my molar. The gum had swollen,
angry, inflamed like those overrun streets—
because the nerve had died, and in its passing
infection flooded in. When she drilled
through the dentin, she told me she could smell it:
the tissue necrotic, packed away inside enamel.
Stinking death had to be chiseled out—
it had filled the space and taken over,
flooding out the life from surrounding softness.
The infection blotted out the surrounding pink:
Not good. Not pretty.
We cannot see that the tissue has died
until the swelling sets in—
pours into the roadways of veins. I was afraid
to lose the tooth, the security, the wholeness of it,
but it was no longer whole.
