Look how this slick white island rises from its dewy pink earth all rich with love
decayed and sugaring beneath the tongue, how the mouth speaks contrary to age,

to life: that Widow Quillin was not always Widow’d, only Quillin, only someone else 
still, with very fair teeth sprung up once before. Call her Bess, a good queen

of her linen cupboard, of her small china cup, just one, pale as bone, as delicate as a child 
but less because the cup is still in her hand and her children are buried, even the last,

even the one who she wished had buried her but whose mouth showed no new teeth, no 
newness, nowhere, not at all, who only grew old, as old as a man, like Mister Quillin.  

Look, his name is all but gone from her mouth, both of their names, all of the names, 
spit out one and then the other in brittle ivory fragments painted dark as rum sugar; 

look for the color now in milky tea brewed strong enough to taste, as strong as its burn on 
the lap because everything spills now, poor three-toothed Bess, and she’ll pour 

into her eggshell cup, as blue-veined as her hand, while  something else enlarges 
in the breast’s great soft cavern, bloodying her gums to chatter and bite and brim so full

they, too, overflow.