The Tooth Fairy

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Amidst the plush fibres of cotton-edged rooms,

Where comatose freshness from infancy teems,

A welt in the roof tiles, furred and green,

Is pried open along eight-legged seams. 

The enamel fairy arises from its catacombic

Sleep; puckered and embalmed, like

A maggot, wiled by metamorphosis and dilated

By rainfall. Drunk on the ruse of tykes,

The decrepit plaything now looms,

Sworn bitter by age and undone wings,

Fluttering wildly in moth-razed costumes.

Merry with abjection, doused in time’s perfume,

It feasts greedily on duck-feathers,

The altar of the bedroom,

Yielding a swaddled tooth that spumes

Folkish dreams of silver.

The sprite, now thick-set with riches and 

Sated shining eyes,

Unties its steely shoulder blades

And bathes in the flaxen blush 

Of its calcified fingertips and gilded abdomen.