#teeth poetry

[blue-sunshine]

Hello, friends!! I'm so excited to announce that I'll be collaborating with Curious Corvid Publishing, a gothic indie publisher, to publish my first-ever collection of poetry in 2024! I love Curious Corvid Publishing and highly recommend them, so I'm incredibly honored to be able to share this news with all of you.

In case you missed my first post, the collection is titled "Is it Bad if My Gums Bleed When I Floss?" It follows Netty, a dental student, from childhood to adulthood and the relationships she forms throughout. It’s dead dove, and a lot of body horror—it's pulling teeth and probing gum pockets and tasting blood on someone else’s lips. If you love the macabre, if you love teeth, or if you simply want a hauntingly beautiful story, "Is it Bad if My Gums Bleed When I Floss?" may be perfect for you. 🦷💙

Below is the announcement Curious Corvid Publishing posted on their Instagram! Thank you so much, everybody.

[feral-ballad]

Alex Dimitrov, from Love and Other Poems; “The Weather of Our Lives”

[troyandabedsnewapartment]

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO LOVE YOU AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO STOP LOVING YOU.

1. unknown. | 2. ethel cain, strangers | 3. Melissa broder, skeleton glitter | 4. mitski, a pearl | 5. maggie nelson, bluets | 6. molly brodak, molly brodak | 7. rio romeo, nothing’s new | 8. becca de la rosa & maybell martin, mabel: matryoshka | 9. mitski, humpty

[petrichor-moss-and-lightning]

The Mountain Goats, “Heel Turn 2” // Topaz Winters, “battlefield” // Lilith Kerr (me) // The Mountain Goats, “This Year” // e.e. cummings // Tumblr user @girlroach // Angus & Julia Stone, “Make it Out Alive” // Gang of Youths, “Achilles Come Down” // Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive” // Mary Oliver // Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” // Richard Siken, “Snow and Dirty Rain” // Lilith Kerr (me) // Lilith Kerr (me), “rebirth” from unloving the knife (2023) // Gwendolyn Brooks, “To the Young Who Want to Die” // Lilith Kerr (me again; sorry, I was running out of material lmao) // Tumblr user @daisies-on-a-cup // The Mountain Goats, “Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1”

[kimdokjas]

on looking back & repetition as metaphors for grief

1. a grief observed - c.s. lewis // 2. spirited away - dir. hayao miyazaki // 3. orpheus tries to hold on to eurydice (c. 1791) - françois gérard // 4. omniscient reader's viewpoint - singshong // 5. gilgamesh a verse narrative - tr. herbert mason // 6. omniscient reader's viewpoint - singshong // 7. on the other side of grief with ocean vuong - aaron schwartz // 8. time travel told in five parts - judas h. // 9. omniscient reader's viewpoint - blackbox art // 10. housewife, the vanishing princess - jenny diski // 11. poem in pieces, a log; a history of too much - adrianne kalfopoulou // 12. the butterfly's burden; cadence chooses me - mahmoud darwish // 13. metamorphoses - ovid

image ids under the cut:

1. A quote by C.S. Lewis. I look up at the night sky. Is there anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?

2. Dialogue from the Spirited Away screenplay. Haku says: But I can't go any farther. Just go back the way you came, you'll be fine. But you have to promise not to look back, not until you've passed through the tunnel.

3. A painting by François Gérard. Orpheus tries to hold on to Eurydice as she lies prone in his arms. Orpheus has a desperate expression on his face.

4. An extract from Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. A tale of this new world continued to flow on. But then, just as the subway's doors closed, Han Sooyoung looked behind her with a slightly unsure, hard-to-read face of someone that left something behind. Even Yoo Joonghyuk looked back, too. The only person who didn't was Kim Dokja.

5. An extract from The Epic of Gilgamesh. If you are Gilgamesh and did those things, why / Are you so emaciated and your face half-crazed? / I have grieved! Is it so impossible / To believe? he pleaded. / My friend who went through everything with me / Is dead! / No one grieves that much, she said. / Your friend is gone. Forget him. / No one remembers him. He is dead. / Enkidu. Enkidu. Gilgamesh called out: / Help me. They do not know you / As I know you.

6. An extract from Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. None of them could understand. They couldn't understand that there was someone in this world who could never live in the present.

7. A quote by Aaron Schwartz. In a way, grief is a marker of time. There was this and then there wasn't this, but you're still here,

8. A stanza by Judas H. so in the dream you find a way to go back / back to the days of sunshine on her not-yet grey hair / back to the hummingbird that came / when she called / back to when she still had a voice / to call them at all / time travel and grief are really not so different / it is all about looking back

9. Official art of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint by Blackbox. Yoo Joonghyuk and Han Sooyung turn to look back at the viewer. Kim Dokja in the background walks ahead without looking back.

10. A quote by Jenny Diski: People don't understand about repetition, do they? How it is at the heart (thump, thump, thump) of obsession; at the erotic centre (drip, drip drip) of desire. You do, of course. Repetition is insatiability spelt sideways.

11. A quote by Adrianne Kalfopoulou. Grief will keep you reaching back / for what is not there

12. Poetry by Mahmoud Darwish. I am still here / but you won't return as you were when I left you / you won't return, and I won't return

13. A quote from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?

[emilybeemartin]

Look me in the face and tell me this isn't canon.

[letters-from-the-gaps]

Patron Saint of Bloody Teeth

An attempt at getting a little sanitized with my writing. Fair bit of gorey imagery coming up, so no hard feelings if that's not your jam!

They added a new Saint

Did you hear? And not a 

Mild one, either. Not one you could de-

Fang, de-claw, turn into something spineless 

And empty. Gilded and hollow. No, this Saint came

Barreling into Heaven riding a stolen car. Yes,

Riding, not driving. She had her entrails wrapped around its

Steering wheel, was holding her small intestine like reins. Like

She was driving a chariot. Heaven had forgotten that the 

Sun was pulled by chariots before He got 

Involved: she figured it was time to remind Him. Anyways,

After the terrible clamor of trumpets and horns and the 

Billion billion wings of ten million angels subsided, and 

After Saint Peter had gotten his wits back–snatched from the edge, 

Inches away from joining the sinners he had just sent downstairs–

They asked her who she was, with their many mouthed formalities. 

Word on the street is they asked her:

“WHO ARE YOU, INTERLOPER, TO SULLY THE GATES OF THE LORD YOUR GOD? WHO ARE YOU, VICIOUS LITTLE THING, TO LEAVE TIRE TRACKS ON THE HEAVENLY CLOUDS OF THE LORD YOUR GOD?”

A buddy of mine says they sounded like fog horns, like lighthouses, like 

Falling cities and burning stars. I think they sounded tired. And very

Afraid. 

She did not step off her smoldering chariot, and she certainly didn’t let

Go of her bloody reins. She looked at them, that heavenly host arrayed against

Her–seraphs and cherubs and towers and wheels aplenty–and she smiled 

With a hundred golden canines, and she said to them:

“MY NAME DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE–IT DIED WHEN I DID, SMASHED AGAINST THE ROCKS OF A LIFE I WASN’T CUT OUT FOR. I’M THE PATRON SAINT OF BLOODY TEETH; PATRON SAINT OF BROKEN KNUCKLES; PATRON SAINT OF SIN-STAINED LOVERS AND SMOKE-TINGED FUCKBUDDIES AND EVERY MISBEGOTTEN FOOL ON THIS ROTTEN EARTH. YOU SHOULD GIVE ME YOUR GOD, SO I CAN EAT HIS HEART. I’LL SETTLE FOR A HALO.”

And lord, her voice was awesome. Not in the way that

I said it, before I ate shit skating. Not in the way that the movies would

Butcher it, turn it into spectacle for spectacle’s sake. I mean

Awesome the way they meant it in the Old Testament. It shook

The pearly gates, sent the residents of the great beyond scattering for 

Cover. For shelter. My buddy went with them–he told me, later, that her voice sounded

Like a train, like a riot, like a dying coyote and a roaring fire. I thought

She sounded like the kind of person I needed to hear

From when I was on Earth. She sounded like her voice hadn’t

Quite caught up with the hormones. She sounded like she could kick

My ass, and every ass in sight. She sounded like she loved me.

There wasn’t a whole lot they could do, that 

Heavenly host. When the Big Man–Hallowed be his 

Name, Blessed be his steps–came by to see what the 

Divine holy fuck had happened, he stopped right in his

Dvine holy tracks. He whispered something to an angel next to him,

And then he said something to the feral chariot rider who had

Smashed his fucking fence, and then she laughed.

She laughed long, and hard, till she was coughing up burning blood, 

Crying acid tears. She laughed till He had to ask if she was 

Alright. She told Him to go somewhere I won’t repeat,

And then she asked if her halo would

Hurt.

He told her it wouldn’t.

I think she was disappointed at that. It didn’t stop her though.

The Patron Saint of Bloody Teeth. Her name isn’t

Important–she said so herself. Her name is whatever

You need it to be. Alive, or dead, or a secret

Third thing. 

And, God as my witness, she wears her names like buckles and

Belts and straps and collars, like ladder laces and 

Torn off patches and flags of a million colors. 

Brighter than the sun.

Not as bright as her halo.

Or her 

Teeth.

[catilinas]

Hera Lindsay Bird, from Waste My Life

[mothsartart]

call me a dog and see how i bite

[blue-sunshine]

I Wrote a Poetry Book 🦷

Hello, friends! I haven’t posted anything on here for a while, apart from reblogging gif sets when I get into a new fandom lol, but I wrote a poetry book, and I want to share more information about it!! I would really appreciate anyone skimming over this and/or reblogging. ❤️

A few months ago, I finished my first poetry manuscript, Is It Bad if My Gums Bleed When I Floss? If you’re a fan of the macabre, poems about trauma and self-acceptance, or you happen to love teeth like I do, this book might be for you! 

Is it Bad if My Gums Bleed When I Floss? is a collection of poems following Netty, a dental student, from childhood to adulthood and the relationships she forms throughout, including a sexually abusive relationship with her professor. When she emerges on the other side, it’s with heavy trauma and a newfound desire to fully accept her own sexuality, as well as heal her fractured relationship with herself. It’s a lot of body horror—it is pulling teeth and probing gum pockets and tasting blood on someone else’s lips. It’s literally teeth poetry. It’s not pretty, but I think that’s the beauty of it.

Because I know it’s easy to see this and not really know what the hell “teeth poetry” means or what my writing is actually like, here’s an example—this is a concrete poem I want on the back cover of the book, which touches on a lot of the themes and images in the collection (please excuse the poor quality; I don’t know how to fix that lol):

I want her, I want her 

under my pillow are my baby 

teeth soaking up saliva 

in his mouth 

I taste my blood

under my fingernails 

press into her skin 

is so pretty

little lips saying

“It’s Netty,” and I—

I’m really proud of this manuscript; completing it was like putting to rest years of hatred and shame that were festering within me. But I can’t say any of this without giving a BIG thank you to @tigerlilycorinne​ and @jovialobservationanchor​ for supporting me while writing this. If it weren’t for them reading it, leaving feedback and suggestions, and generally just being the best cheerleaders in the world, I probably would’ve just let it sit in my Google Drive.

One last note: I have an author Instagram and a Ko-fi if you want to follow or support me elsewhere! I���ll keep you guys updated on any news I hear from the indie publishers I’ve sent this manuscript to, as well as new things I’m writing. (Between you and me, I have another book in the works...!)

Again, I would very much appreciate if anybody reblogs this! Tag a poetry lover, the dental hygienist you follow, a Dead Dove fan, or the casual tooth enjoyer in your life. I want my poetry to find the audience I’m certain is out there. If you know me, you know I’m not always confident in my writing, but I think this is it. 🦷❤️

[feral-ballad]

Alda Merini, tr. by Susan Stewart, from Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alda Merini; “Roman Wedding”

[Text ID: “you will wound my flesh with your teeth, / you will settle into the fervor of my yearning / to choke its sense of urgency.”]

[angeleternity]

wallpaper made by me!!

[thatsbelievable]

[bitesizedpoetry]

letter from virginia woolf to vita sackville-west (30 August 1940)

[asoftepiloguemylove]

A SIN WORTH HURTING FOR; THE BEAUTY OF QUEER LOVE

Dante Émile ON TRANSFAGGOTRY // Richard Siken Crush // 刻在你心底的名字 Your Name Engraved Herein (2020) dir. Patrick Kuang-Hui Liu // Lev Verlaine Teeth Are Coming In (via @mutualantagonism) // @/stoffberg (instagram) // Danez Smith Recklessly (via @tendermimi) // Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins // Natalie Diaz "These Hands, If Not Gods," Post Colonial Love Poem (via @anxieteandbiscuits) // @julykings GAY COWBOY LOVE POEM

[rotinmycore]

my teeth are embedded in this floor.