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Writer's pictureJen Hughes

Metal Hell


This poem was originally published in discontinued magazine, Oletangy Review's Winter 2016 issue.


I couldn't get a screen grab, as the website is no longer available.


There is metal hell in my mouth

Seems like eternity until they’re out

My orthodontist is a masochistic auld trout

She invites me to sit in the torturers chair


What choice do I have? There’s no other way

To get my teeth straight

It reclines back, I lie and wait

For the wrenching, tightening of my braces.


My tongue has a squiggly cut

A bar in the rooth of my mouth I did suck

Unconsciously, in agony, it takes guts

To come here, I must be nuts

Ratchett laughs, it’s my own fault really.


My own fault? That I was born with wonky teeth?

Yes, if you wobbled your baby teeth when you were wee.

And it’s you that’s sucking that bar, not me.

She tells me. Just cause she has a university degree

Means she can have sadism and superiority.


Disfigurement, it better be worth it when it’s done.

Because years of braces is not fun.

I’m a gleekit lookin’ geek, it’s only just begun

Hell is not fire, brimstone and gunk

But the blood red braces that are in my mouth!


Cover Image by Sophie McNicol



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