Our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Dyer,
says to us: No Chewing Gum.
But ruminants, we chew and chew —
Double Bubble, Juicy Fruit —
and blink away a rush of tears
when avid teeth chomp down
on cheek or tongue. A probing finger
checks for blood. We snap and pop,
ventriloquists — it wasn’t me! —
until she turns, her palm outstretched
as if we might release that pallid wad
now hardening and flavorless
into her hand. That righteous posture,
lipsticked mouth a lipless line,
that hand outthrust, she wades
into a rising tide of battered desks.
We suck in telltale Black Jack breath,
gaze earnestly at blackboard, book,
attend her steady skirted swish
and square-heeled clomp until it stops.
Dry-mouthed, we swallow, open wide
to show our gumless gums, our blameless teeth.
We watch her hand, which drops to drum
the desk and drops again to strum the pleats
that spill, a brown cascade, from waist to shins
— that empty hand.
The gum, the gum is gone, hard bruise
to track its slow descent, gullet to gut,
where now, we know, we have been warned,
it will accrue, agglutinate, remain. Forever.
An artist, poet, and freelance writer, J.I. Kleinberg lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg. Her chapbooks include The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Sleeping Lessons (Milk & Cake Press, 2025) as well as three collections of her visual poems.
