Jo Bratten

Floss

I’m at the dentist and I think of you
running your tongue along the edge of my
teeth. The drill hums. I rinse, rinse again and

spit. Four decades and still I haven’t learned
how to brush properly my dentist says.
He despairs of me. I do too I say

every day. The problem is the angle
it seems. I brush too straight. I brush too hard.
Forty-five degrees and a lighter touch.

I nod, fluoride smile. He wants me to show
him how I floss. I do. He grimaces.
At home I practise. The mirror hoicks me

back at me, tooth-hounded, gums like jelly,
blood-mouthed: I am Lamia, Empusa —
feasting, repenting, fasting, digging in;

there must be a whole body in there. Hooked flesh
squirms on the tetchy thread. They say
you get used to the bleeding. And then it stops.

Jo Bratten is a writer and teacher, originally from the eastern United States but based now in London. Her work has appeared in Ambit, Acumen, Poetry Birmingham and on Ink Sweat & Tears, amongst others.