Inveterate

our daughter, spurred by vet advice, put pen to

paper (crumpled that) then brushed the teeth

of Bronko (undecrepit pet), new to such quotidian

bent—puerile fangs just softly clench—and so

she put to rest another of the old wives’ made-

for-TV tests, stopped a home-grown cure at horse’s

mouth—Bronko, barely bucking back or forth,

trusting brushing teeth a somehow sound idea,

seeking someone’s utter truth. Tread, by contrast,

rarely needs accouterments of grammar school

purview (let alone a truth), and so a business

piddle-paddles forth: dogs for dentists or, the versa

any kid with grit can tweak—‘local hygiene for

humanity’s best friend’—what could interfere?

Hardly hoping not to kick a cat when (toothless, in

the main) bents of days begin to calcify (unfaith-

fully, as they do), why not scrimp the makings

of simple escapades? Bid wild things interface with

paste, and let our daughter serve her better days

in spurs she’ll likely make—matron to mongrel,

in their mutual space. God knows we’ll more than

acclimate to cobwebbed brush strokes (foreign,

family held) upon dogmatic palettes, panting still.

Jot out, meanwhile, what we will—hold those

jowls and don’t surmise we’d want none of that—

a family, after all, enameled to a keeping clean.