Second Mouth

When you talk, another mouth opens,
lower, half–way down your throat,
with a long tongue and ugly clumps
of prehensile, yellow teeth.
It licks its lips, savors what’s to come.
A cutting comment or two, at first,
then belching out jeers and mockery,
a gushing stream of vulgar jabber.
Don’t you hear it? I can’t hear anything else.
What are you saying, anyway? Weather?
Lunch? Something about your parents?
It shuts up, and your lips keep moving,
but I still can’t make out your words.
See? it says, See? But I don’t want
to see it that way, even as it lures
your hand, as though to scratch your throat,
into its teeth, to gnaw on some
of your softest, most oblivious bones.