Jeweller

Jay Ruzesky

I was criminal, sneaking
into your room after sleep to snatch
the shining box under the pillow, white pearl
tooth inside. Slipped in
a two dollar coin as replacement, calling card
of a master thief.

Back at the hideout, lamp lit, green
eye-shade poised on my forehead,
I have the genuine article.
Hollow through the middle, specks of blood
around the base, I blow across the opening to
test its purity.

I said used teeth are given to babies who
don't have any yet.

How will it be when the world, your classmates,
steal this magic? When my status as
giant-conjuror, answerer of questions,
drops a notch, and another until I am
just a father who lies beautifully?

I'll save the tooth for now,
bring it out in years to remind you
of that smile full of holes; of how once
and for real you believed.

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Chickadee Poem

Jay Ruzesky

I can't quite picture the staircase
but see you stop on the way up
a sandwich in your hand when you hear
a chirp trill beyond the buzz of fluorescent lights;
a switch clicks, erasure, the way a good idea
slips away if you consider it too long. So you go back down
and find the bird packed tight as a feathery tumor
in the guts of the step.

You think for a minute
to figure out what to do with the sandwich,
abandoned it in its institutional-strength plastic,
reach in and cup the chickadee in both hands
as you used to do with grasshoppers as a child
feeling their violin bows rosin
in the cave of your curled palms.
Back out the glass doors
open
and see the tiny black thumbtack
blink once before it flies.

You go up to your office and
write a few lines. Teach a class,
stop in at the library.
Come back and look at letters
too obedient on the page.

Nah, you say to yourself. This is not the day
for a chickadee poem. You crumple
the paper and hold it before tossing it in the wastebasket,
see a dee, and a dee, and a dee angled on the foolscap,
paper wings thought-bent in your stalling hand.

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