to hold the teeth. In her opinion, the world has too many teeth. They remind her of bullets, little white bullets, as they are always leaving blood behind them. Are there not battles enough? Yes, there are battles enough—here to China, and all the towns between. In all the towns between here and China, the tooth fairies are in the backyard with their shovels. What on earth are they doing, the humans ask. The humans are clotted around the holes. Some of them lean their upper bodies over the edges, brazenly, as they ogle down, down into so many holes like mouths in the ground. “We are burying teeth,” the tooth fairies say. “Doesn’t everyone want closure? Will it ever end?” Some humans say yes. Others say no, and never. It will never end. They begin to go around baring their teeth at each other. Town to town, teeth fly like shrapnel. And the little small sounds of moans sound as if no other sound were ever sounding at all, in all the towns. The tooth fairies are so exhausted their baby teeth are coming loose. Their shovels whir. Their muscles become enormous.
Cindy Beebe is a Pushcart nominee with poems in The Southern Review, Image, Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, Rattle, Ninth Letter, and The Pinch, among others. She lives in Collierville, Tennessee, with her husband and sons and a couple of slacker house cats.