A Little Tooth

by Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two, and four, and five, then she wants some meat directly from the bone. It's all over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet talker on his way to jail. And you, your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue nothing. You did, you loved, your feet are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

6S

Thomas Lux is a member of the writing faculty and Director of the M.F.A. Program in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and a core faculty member of the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. His six sentences are a prose version of a poem which appeared in a New York City subway car as part of the "Poetry in Motion" initiative.