Wall of Teeth
The bottom layers are molars forever gnashing the ground that won’t give up an inch. Bedrock of another world which no man can chip to add to their own foundation. It’s the canines and incisors snarling between the rows of field that you have to keep your bits from. Not a monster, it’s completely immobile—aside from an inch or so on windy nights—and farmers have learned over the generations to pay it no mind, planting their crops to a plow’s width from its chompers and letting the wind carry wild seed to fill the gap. Origin myths conflict as such tales are bound to. Some say it was planted, some say it rose from the remnants of a great battle like a terrible monument to the young dead. Others claim magic, though they’re stricken with the naughtsies when asked to recall another instance of magic. Sciencey-folk claim it’s unique and needs more studying. Been claiming it longer than farmers have pushed their crops near its ripping teeth. One man set up shop at the south end, tried selling tickets to the “curiosity” but they ran him out of town quick enough. He’d sold jars of clean air the year past. School kids still tempt fate there, push their friends or hold a weakling near enough to its saliva sopped fence-face that they would swear it smelled like sulfur and horse-spit. Just as they’d dance along the cliffside when swooned by the fairies of dismay or rejection.
In our dream band, on glass harmonium:
Zebulon Huset is a high school teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Rattle, Gone Lawn, North American Review, The Southern Review, Fence and many others. He publishes the prompt blog Notebooking Daily, and edits the journal Coastal Shelf.
Ran Off With the Star Bassoon 