poetry by Yena Sharma Purmasir
THE ROOT OF IT
I didn’t always hate my teeth. At first, I had
no teeth. When I smiled, it was like the space
inside a vase, before the water and the flowers
and the mildew. Then they came in, like a family barging
into a diner, ready for laughter and fried chicken.
My teeth that were almost straight, almost white,
almost perfect. My teeth that bit into apples
the way heroes bring down an axe. My teeth
that made my dimples pop, made the dentist go
Oh wow, made my body feel like a first draft.
[Do you know what they do to first drafts?
How they rip them up and stitch them back
and parade them in public, so you can see
all the talent it takes to make a goodenough
thing hate itself?]
Yena Sharma Purmasir (she/her) is a poet and essayist from New York City. She is the author of Until I Learned What It Meant (Where Are You Press, 2013), When I’m Not There (self-published, 2016), OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic (Party Trick Press, 2022), and VIRAHA (Game Over Books, 2022). In 2020, she earned a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on South Asian religious traditions. As the former Queens Teen Poet Laureate (2010-2011) and a lifelong New York snob, Yena now ironically and happily lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can find her online and walking along the Charles River.