Halitosis

Your breath smells like picnic food rotting in a park trash bin,

like the early morning air at a New York fish market,

like a Jack Russell terrier’s sweaty skin

after its daily half hour gallop across the front yard,

like forgotten milk in an apartment refrigerator melding with the scent

of the man who died there several months ago, unfound.

 

Your teeth, gapped in between like corners of antique crown moldings,

Snap like stale chips stuck in too-thick dip,

like undesired fragments of wished on wishbones,

like a chicken’s neck between skilled hands,

like hole-filled seashells under wading boots,

submerged and drifting, decayed further by fluid and time.

 

Your tongue looks like a California desert in drought season,

like the skin of a middle-aged smoker who won free cigarettes --

four packs a week for life --

like rock salt sucking a winter road dry,

like wet flour caked at the bottom of a Bundt pan,

or a spilled bottle of White Out drying in chunks.