Water Dragon, Irina Tall Novikova, 2023. Ink, gel pen, collage, colored paper. 40 x 30 cm.
A Tumor Made of Teeth Found in The Pelvis of an Ancient Egyptian
Sharon Whitehill
In a multi-chambered underground tomb,
a young woman of 18 or 20, a calcified clump
in the cup of her pelvis. Not a fetus,
as archeologists thought, but a teratoma:
one embryonic germ cell gone rogue,
multiplied into a tumorous mass presenting as teeth,
a growth made of dentin, enamel, cementum.
When I think about teeth I remember the boy
who flung You’re a buck-toothed jerk! at me
when I was ten, after which four years of braces
and the white smile that still gleams
from the pages of my high school yearbook.
At times I still dream of spitting them out,
one by one, in my hand.
Teratoma, from the Greek teras, meaning monster.
This discovery in Egypt is rare, a tumor
of tissue so hard it lasts thousands of years:
a single tumor that split over time into another tooth
nestled on top of the young woman’s leg bone.
Two molariform pieces complete in themselves,
an enamel crown each, with its own roots.
I think about teeth and recoil at the image
of molars transplanted below and within.
See myself as a young woman of twenty,
Pregnancy, Birth,& Family Planning
splayed on my chest, eyes closed to visualize
arm buds and leg buds, fingernails, eyelashes,
growing and growing. Not tumors of teeth.
A young woman, placed in the tomb
with her hand curved on her pelvis,
a body arranged as if to mirror the way
someone clutches herself at the source of the hurt,
or communes with what grows in her womb.
On one finger, a ring with an image of Bes,
protector of mothers and children,
its positioning made more poignant
by the seeming but fruitless appeal to the god
for a child. Or an end to the hurt.
Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two scholarly biographies, two memoirs, a full collection of poems, and three poetry chapbooks. Her latest, This Sad and Tender Time (Kelsay Books), appeared in December 2023.