For Christmas you give your father
three hundred dollars to buy dentures.
Toothless, he must now suck meat,
juice it up with saliva, grind it
with pinkish jaws till it’s ready
for swallowing.
He’ll go across the border,
to Mexico, where it’s cheapest,
but more dangerous.
You tell him how young boys will follow him,
begging to shine his shoes.
How some men hack up dogs as training
for human dismemberment.
Los encajuelados, he grunts,
referring to bodies concealed
in car trunks, the disappeared,
lucky to be found by their smell.
He knows all about it.
But your father is old-school.
Too macho to believe in threats.
Too macho for bratty mocosos
to keep him from crossing over
and getting his new teeth.