by
Exemplars of biological hardness, one of the first,
fish scales that inched forward to the jaw,
all that will remain of a fifty-foot shark.
They create
the oxymoron of a love bite,
skin tracings of frustrated possessiveness,
and consuming passion.
They're used
by mother mammals to chew away
the apron strings of birth.
They should be sheathed when kissing a child.
Baby ones create good fairy dreams
under a child's pillow,
but also dark omens when a troubled grownup sleeps:
a razor sharp vision in a nightmare
falling out one by one, an old man's worn gums,
marble tombstones that age fungal green.
Fulcrum point of contact, to puncture or caress.
Yet such easy prey to sweetness,
which eats into the pulp and scoops out the nerve;
the hardness of the ages sickened to decay
by drops of honey
Richard Fein works as a high school science teacher in New York City. He has been writing for several years and has been published in dozens of print and Internet journals, including Birmingham Poetry Review, Zuzu's Petals, Ellipsis, Orphic Lute and Mississippi Review.