Cavities Are Inherited
After the song “Sad Eyes,” Robert John, 1979
Dr. Mahaffey warns us to take it easy on the sweet tooth,
tells my mom our cavities are inherited. Sad music
pipes through the dentist office speakers, old people singing
about broken hearts & things I don’t understand. Why do people
only sing about love, I ask my mom on a trip to Sears
where the pigeons roost on the belly of the S. Where once I saw
a bird hanging from its neck on a wire. Now they put spikes on signs
to keep the birds from making nests. While our mother shops,
my sisters & I play hide & seek in the clothes racks
& she pretends we are not her children. If we drop something
she warns us behind clenched teeth & secretly pinches our arms.
At the bank I look through her purse; my mother carries so much.
I tear slips of paper & make drawings of mice climbing up ladders
of bisected dollhouses. For me, once Barbie’s house is set up
there is nothing else to play. I don’t know their dramas.
My drama is only the kitten Hang In There poster in Dr. Mahaffey’s office.
The treasure chest of Five & Dime stuff little kids are tricked into.
But I am beyond all those ploys. We were being anesthetized,
warned of all that’s sweet. Then, that time I saw Dr. Mahaffey
& I thought—Bruce—the whole other side of him, in a red convertible,
top down, feathered 70s hair in the late 80s, in shiny cop glasses,
driving alongside our station wagon. I watched him tilt back the dregs
of a can of Budweiser, cranking music, some American band
that peaked too soon or that never peaked at all. Remembering
his bare hands in my mouth, fingers smelling of apple cinnamon soap
& singing into my face, Sad eyes, you knew there’d come a day,
as he drilled & my mouth opening wider, as wide as it could go.
tells my mom our cavities are inherited. Sad music
pipes through the dentist office speakers, old people singing
about broken hearts & things I don’t understand. Why do people
only sing about love, I ask my mom on a trip to Sears
where the pigeons roost on the belly of the S. Where once I saw
a bird hanging from its neck on a wire. Now they put spikes on signs
to keep the birds from making nests. While our mother shops,
my sisters & I play hide & seek in the clothes racks
& she pretends we are not her children. If we drop something
she warns us behind clenched teeth & secretly pinches our arms.
At the bank I look through her purse; my mother carries so much.
I tear slips of paper & make drawings of mice climbing up ladders
of bisected dollhouses. For me, once Barbie’s house is set up
there is nothing else to play. I don’t know their dramas.
My drama is only the kitten Hang In There poster in Dr. Mahaffey’s office.
The treasure chest of Five & Dime stuff little kids are tricked into.
But I am beyond all those ploys. We were being anesthetized,
warned of all that’s sweet. Then, that time I saw Dr. Mahaffey
& I thought—Bruce—the whole other side of him, in a red convertible,
top down, feathered 70s hair in the late 80s, in shiny cop glasses,
driving alongside our station wagon. I watched him tilt back the dregs
of a can of Budweiser, cranking music, some American band
that peaked too soon or that never peaked at all. Remembering
his bare hands in my mouth, fingers smelling of apple cinnamon soap
& singing into my face, Sad eyes, you knew there’d come a day,
as he drilled & my mouth opening wider, as wide as it could go.
Alexandra Lytton Regalado's poetry collection, Matria, is the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Her poems, stories, and non-fiction have been published by The Academy of American Poets, Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, The Notre Dame Review, Narrative, The Shallow Ends, and others. Co-founder of Kalina publishing, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of more than ten Central American-themed books. She is chief editor at lapiscuchamagazine.com (a literary magazine dedicated to the Salvadoran community) and she is assistant editor at SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami). She has received fellowships from CantoMundo and Letras Latinas and is the winner of the Coniston Poetry Prize. Her ongoing photo-essay project about El Salvador, through_the_bulletproof_glass, is on Instagram.
Art: Borders' Lass (in memory of Stella Tennant), acrylic, paper, fabric on birch panel, 2021 by Kelly Cressio-Moeller.