Rail Road Crossing

by Lauren Bennett

There was a dull throb at my temples and a clench in my jaw. I hurled four bodies down the road alongside me. Seventy miles per hour, aiming toward train tracks obscured by a charcoal blur. I stepped on the gas. No sound but tires crumbling asphalt. I ground my teeth down then asked “How much do you all value your lives?” A pair of slow-moving chapped lips answered “Enough.” Enough. One hundred fifteen miles per hour toward those glimmering tracks. Air whipping by punctured with “slow down!’s” On impact, I swear I heard my own neck break.

Cogitative Choppers

by Lauren Bennett

The I.V. drips a mixture of tranquility and propofol.
Sliding through my veins,
I melt into the grey pleather chair.
Fluorescent lights mellow to a soft glow.
The novocaine nipped needle numbs.
Creases and folds of my dentist’s face shift-
an aged mirage fading in an anesthetic desert.

The four wisdoms are cut out.
Gums carved up: the thanksgiving turkey.
Each small little bone- covered in intelligent enamel.
Wrangled out as my test scores lower.
Their space making room for my dim-witted molars.
Vacating space for simple sentences
I’m a thirteen-year-old stoner in the mouth.

I stumble into consciousness.
Feeling about as sharp as the safety-scissors I’d be forced to use.
Those sage teeth evacuated a juvenile mine,
the stiff black stitches in my mouth
occupy the space for new knowledge.
My tongue probes them-
glides over them.
Between sentences constructed at a third grade reading level.

A latex clad hand hands me a small mason jar.
Placed in my palm weighed with sedatives,
the water inside sloshes left to right.
Peering in,
through eyes altered by opiates
I follow four ivory chunks of my former IQ.
Tilt my hand left to right,
contently watching high test scores,
college acceptance letters,
and a 4.0 GPA wallow in water.