PAPERWEIGHT GOLD TOOTH
S. E. Smith
I was spending the afterlife as a doomed gang
of nurses. Every night at the used car lot we,
meaning I in the afterlife, threw our signs
of amputated gold leg, braggadocio fever
and hookworm to the sky. There were other
gangs. The paralegals owned the five blocks
between the bridge and the drycleaner’s,
which, to our vexation, included the hospital.
This is why the gang I became in the afterlife
was doomed. Or it is possible that I was doomed
long before, from asking the beige skylights to be
my halo, from asking the thug to give me the gold
tooth I coveted. The stewardess gang begs us
for clemency. My colors are black and blue.
S.E. Smith holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She currently lives in Austin, where she is Managing Editor of Bat City Review. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2008, Black Warrior Review, and Open Thread Regional Review, among others. Recently, her collection of short stories was named a finalist in the Keene Prize for Literature.
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