Tonight's Poet Corner: My First Bar Brawl

My First Bar Brawl
by Belinda Roddie

I remember the blood streaking
my lower lip after my father pulled
a rotten tooth out of my mouth
with an aggressive pair of alligator
forceps. The taste of rust now
is not so different than it was
so many years ago.

She remembers the day I made
pancakes for her when she was coming
back to reality after a migraine
that pummeled her like an angry god's
bronzed fists. I was good
with a pan and spatula, and she was good
at kissing me.

They tell me that I shouldn't have stepped
in, even after she began to scream. They
tell me that it wasn't worth the spilled drink,
or the stained shirt, or the punch
in the jaw, a strong enough blow to knock
two of my molars askew, like ivory
splintering in a collapsed piano. But I had

been playing a jingle on the bar's old
organ before the bastard put his hands
on her, and although he may have brought
me back to childhood flavors, I relish
in the fact that I hit him harder, and better,
and made him cry like I cried when I was
five years old, enduring metal lips plucking
decaying bone and eroding enamel from
my raw, reddening gum.