Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
JR Rhine Oct 2017
Baby Teeth

I pulled the prayers from my raw gums like baby teeth. With the
          blood spat into my palm, there lay the tools with which I
          chewed up everything I ever put into my mouth. And yet even
          then I had felt the hands working my jaw for me.

Every day I tongue the empty space before meals and again at
          bedtime. There’s this moment when I feel like I should be
          saying something, but the void leaves my tongue aimless in the
          newfound space. I’ve grown accustomed to it.

I wasn’t so fond of it when they wiggled in my mouth when I talked
          or ate, acting like a broken saloon door for my roving tongue. I
          didn’t like to brag about it with my friends. It didn’t quite feel
          like a rite of passage as it did a loose Band-Aid.

They dangled on those last few roots that desperately clung on to that
          childlike innocence, which looked like Awana badges, Sunday
          school, father reading to me bedtime stories of David, the
          girlfriends in church that were always repentant after we
          touched;

I began to believe I could sew it back in if I only believed hard
          enough. It was in those last few efforts that I was at my lowest,
          when my gums started to become infected as bacteria got
          beneath the bone and festered in the flesh. I grew sorer and
          sorer.

At some point I ripped every last one of them out. The therapist had
          cancelled my last three appointments. The bible study couldn’t
          progress since it refused to answer my first three questions. I
          stopped believing an artist had to first and foremost be
          miserable.

I still keep them in a little plastic treasure chest in a cardboard box in
          the garage, along with my plastic baseball trophies and other
          sentiments unworthy of the bedroom shelves. I recycled all the
          extra bibles I previously felt guilty enough to never say no to.

Sometimes a meal looks so good I feel the need to thank someone for
          it. Sometimes I wake up so happy I need to give someone credit.
          Sometimes that’s not the case. I’m happy I don’t have the voices
          telling me through my own teeth how sinful I am.

I’m also happy they’re not telling you how sinful you are.

I tongue the space before meals and before I drift to sleep. I feel
          something growing there. My parents are looking into an
          operation that will put the teeth back in. I still fear one day I’ll
          be the one to grab the sewing kit.

I don’t fear cavities anymore. I think they took them all with them. I
          brush my teeth now and believe in modern medicine, and
          climate change. Needless to say, I didn’t put them under my
          pillow that night.
JR Rhine Sep 2017
Hey everyone!
I just wanted to let you all know about the release of my self-published book of poems, "Parking Lot Poems"! Thank you all for your support; this website has been instrumental in shaping me into the poet I am today. If you have ever read a single word or line from one of my works, thank you. If you are interested in purchasing a copy, you can do so here:

http://jrrhinepoetry.bigcartel.com/product/parking-lot-poems-poetry-book

Thank you!
http://jrrhinepoetry.bigcartel.com/product/parking-lot-poems-poetry-book
JR Rhine Jul 2017
our president is
waging Thumb Wars

pressing the button
another pinball appears

he pulls back the spring
and hits send

watching the vociferous orb
encapsulated with incorrigibility
ricochet across the continents

the hemispheres
the stratospheres

across every neighborhood
and nation

bing bing boing

the barricades throb
and eyes light up
as the points
begin to rack up

1
2
3
4

he    got-ta    new-high    score

wow

such big thumbs
for such tiny hands
JR Rhine Jul 2017
How long behind Bob Dylan’s Shades—
smoke furls and curls among the glass—
before a man belies his fame?

The corner of the room pervades—
imbued with smoke if so to pass—
How long behind Bob Dylan’s Shades?

Visage so cool but starts to jade;
will eyes see through and to surpass,
before a man belies his fame?

Caught in the great aesthetical wake,
the fans will bend and surge en masse—
How long behind Bob Dylan’s Shades?

His words, his voice, depict a sage—
I wonder if the lore will last
before a man belies his fame.

But once the petals cease to sway
and blades blow back a pompous ***—
How long behind Bob Dylan’s shades,
before a man belies his fame?
JR Rhine Jul 2017
Take me to your *******
@cisgenderwhitemale
in salmon shorts sport polo
boat shoes and expensive cologne—

I, emissary of the InterPlanetary
Order of Eugenically-Minded Denizens (IPOEMD),
have come to rid the world
of this contagion—

who for too long has
beguiled us with their
wicked fashion sense
and appalling profile pictures

appearing on friends’ dad’s yachts
smiling behind a pair of Ray-Bans
with a glass of champagne
drunk underage.

Your valedictorian address
bored me,
your sexist racist homophobic xenophobic (etc. etc.)
inside jokes to your friends
on the lacrosse team
sickened me—

I’ve had to listen to you
brag about your ***** size
since puberty and your discovery
of Spike TV—

I watch you mock Black English
in tweets and hashtags
from locker rooms where
the talk can range from
racial slurs to ****-shaming spurs

(talk never to ****
upon its potential revelation
in a political campaign)—

I film your weddings
where you dance all night
in your Aryan enclave
to top 40 songs
screaming “This is my jam!!!”

I scroll through your #familyvaca2k17 posts,
the immaculate hotels and poolside views
concealing the succeeding flophouses crumbling adobes
and dog-ridden streets of dirt and infinite trash—

I see you engrave in bold
ALL LIVES MATTER
BLUE LIVES MATTER
AMERICAN LIVES MATTER
on every writable surface—

and as a meninist,
lament about the harrowing trials
as a victim of reverse racism.

[The white man’s burden
is to carry the weight
of their inability
to be anything
other than
incorrigible.]

I have come to rid the world of you
once and for all:

Taking the Gideon’s bible
from every hotel
and replacing it with
feminist literature,

burning down every
Banana Republic and
coinciding shopping mall,

cutting the brakes
to every Mercedes, Lexus,
and BMW with a
“Salt Life” sticker
on the back window—

You wear your ethnocentrism
like the sleeves of the cardigan
wrapped around your neck
swaying in the air conditioned wind
like a little cape—

[Behold, Cis-Man!

Whose superpowers include:

Getting away with ****
and perpetuating **** culture,

Minimal jail sentences (if at all),

Guaranteed college entry,

Speeding ticket immunity,

and impeccable draft dodgings.]—

I solemnly swear,
I make a pledge
to never procreate
if it will perpetuate
this vile sect of humankind—

I take a vow of celibacy,
I spill my ***** into the dirt—
not one egg will be fertilized,
not one will be conceived

to the soundtrack of Coldplay,
or Kid Rock, or whatever hair metal ballad
conceived you in the first place—

You are a logical phallicy.

You want to talk about eugenics,
you want to stop
breeding all the “retards
spittin’ on your kids”
at the amusement park—

Pledge chastity with me:
Interbreed,
undilute the strain—

and together,
we can end
the White Man’s True Burden:
Existence.






(p.s.
And it is with great irony
that I write this as one of you—
the Judas to your
Megachurch TV Caucasian Christ—

I write it because
if it were by one of
whom you’ve held
under your [jackboots to boat shoes]
since time immemorial—
they’d never stand
to read it—

for even mutiny
among these ranks
has its own
privileges.)
JR Rhine Jul 2017
so he had my number because we met for tutoring on Wednesdays after class but he would text me really late at night asking me the weirdest stuff i would politely say this is incredibly inappropriate and i would not like to talk like this with you but still around two am he would text me lewd stuff again and again then asking if i would go on a date i said dude i am old enough to be your mother imagine if
a guy
          received texts
          like that
                    from a girl
                                  insisting to do ****** stuff BUT
he
would
have
liked
it.
JR Rhine Jun 2017
I love the way you
say my Christian name
without the faith
Next page