A repost from my old archive, edited and reformatted.
Open Gobs and Split Chins
I fell of a pavement curb once.
I was a tightrope walker with an audience of thousands;
I could smell damp straw and hear the gasps as I lost my footing.
Girls threw their hands to their faces
and relinquished their eyesight to their boyfriend’s shoulders,
who took the opportunity for a shifty grope.
My chin split and the blood didn’t show up on the red dress
but the audience had gone.
I can still put my finger in the hole, see?
Even now, 30 years later.
The tip of my index finger goes right down to the bone,
missing muscular structure,
and it makes me think of a skull with a cleft chin,
kinda how Kirk Douglas will look given a few years of grave time.
If I wiggle the finger in a circular motion it makes me wince,
something about gristle, gristle makes me wince,
even the word, a sensation of chewing wool.
It was never fixed.
My jaw clicks on the right side and, just this one time,
I yawned and couldn’t shut my mouth.
Blind panic lassoed my heart and yanked it into my throat,
perhaps it was even visible.
The longest 10 seconds of my life in which I spent a night in hospital,
sat up in bed, howling through my wide open gob.
How would I drink tea?
I don’t yawn properly now, I do little demi-yawns,
too terrified of the consequences of Open Gob.
How would I smoke?
I used to wonder why it was never fixed.
Why wasn’t I taken to hospital
and given stitches and x-rays and pain killers?
I worked that out when I was older.
It could easily have been a fist.
Wow! Frightening enough as an accident of childhood, bringing in the insight of the adult gives this evocative poem a truely chilling close. Ace write Claire! xxx
Your final line hints at scars that go much deeper than chins. And adds great weight to the rest of a superbly written poem of childhood memories. Love the Kirk Douglas line especially. Love, Allie ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Disturbing..read and re-read as i did the first time around.Brilliant read. Maggie
love it!