Ode to the Jaw

By Therese Gleason

Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s National Poetry Month project: Sing the Body: A Collection of Poems Praising Our Selves!

With support from Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) and Florida International University’s Center for Women and Gender Studies, we are publishing poems that celebrate body positivity and our selves.

In addition to publishing the poems as poems of the day, 10 select Sing the Body poems will be displayed on FIU’s main campus near mirrors and places where women encounter themselves. These poems will live in a dedicated portfolio on our website.

Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting SWWIM Every Day! Happy National Poetry Month!

This is for the twin hinge,
hardest of bony workers, 
gatekeeper of body and mind, 
guardian of the toothed cave,
vestibule for breath and sustenance. 
Puppeteer behind the scenes, 
you crank the red drawbridge 
open and closed, sheriff of the mouth, 
keeper of speech, teacher of suck 
and kiss, clamp with damp lips. 
Is it any wonder you yawn
and ache? You are Sisyphus 
of swallowing, Atlas of the mouth’s
gummed palate, tamer of muscular
tongue and teeth. You are chewer 
of words and meat, mandible 
and maxilla in a marriage 
of opposites, chomping till death 
do you part: holy equation of catch 
and release. You are holder of tension, 
detritus of language and emotion 
ground down by the tectonics 
of the molar ridge. Tender buttons, 
jointed joist of bone on bone, 
clenched or unseated in sleep
you rouse the three-headed dragon, 
trigeminal and terrible, to unleash 
a shower of darts shimmering 
from eye socket to cheek. 
O simple machine, mother 
who feeds, domed cathedral 
of human want and need. O 
sacred portal that falls open
at rest when the soul 
is released.

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Therese Gleason is author of two chapbooks: Libation (co-winner, South Carolina Poetry Initiative competition, 2006) and Matrilineal (Finishing Line, 2021). Her poems appear/are forthcoming in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, Rattle, New Ohio Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, America, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Literary Mama, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, KY, she lives in Worcester, MA with her spouse and three children. A literacy teacher at an elementary school, Therese reads for The Worcester Review and has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Find her at theresegleason.com.

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