I look it up on my phone “lock jaw left
side mouth” and scroll through photo
                after photo of people who look
like they chomped straight through
        the ivory grit of a deer skull. Yes,
that was my first thought. Why bite
                something so hard it knocks off
your dearest mechanism,
        hurling a train off its track, headed for
the trees? It’s been years since I’ve gnashed
                a crab claw, hollowing through
shell. I vowed to chew
        slowly, to masticate
matronly. I stopped swallowing fish bones
                 like flaming swords. Stopped gnawing globes
of slick avocado pits. Now,
        lopsided, drooling through

the pines of my teeth, I
                        hinge off. Move my jaw up and down              side to side, like an ice skater cutting
    shoals of grief. Click, click – the tiny gears
of my jaw rusted, loose bolts
                 spewing a junkyard. When
the Bad One locked me out of the apartment, I tried
        prying it open with a butter
knife. When I locked eyes with
                the Disappearing One, I was wearing
an asymmetrical gala apple
                       dress. My jaw
anchored in an awful
                sea. “Stress and anxiety are common” (leaking
proof, % of gaslighting) “causes of muscle” (a hummingbird
                               spasms awake) "tension”. I
hate the dentist, this stupid website, the ads
        popping dandelions with miniscule
x’s to exit, hate that I am back here,
                               again. Click
click, goes my body, the wind-up chattering

               joke teeth. Shouldn’t I know,

better? I try to call
        my breath back, little pet
boa constrictor, volcanic belly
                        ballooning left, “Asian Americans report fewer”
(lock grin and bare jaw) “mental health
                conditions,” left to
fester too long. Prehistoric ferns
        of this Bad One and this Bad One and this Bad One and this
bad jaw, dangling scythe or
                           sickle moon sick. Because I am afraid

of dentists, because I am afraid

        I turn my phone off, hurl

some poor dried slug drool

                         off my mouth-corner. Flop into

this poem, plead to this
        “clenched” (something inside of me,
yolked) body: enough. Enough – I

                               hear you howling