Janan Chan

Cavity Sonnet

Gums are unfeeling. Dentist, unaware,

asks are you okay? I don’t feel a thing;

this is the closest I’ve been to humans.

In one thousand years, I’ve only faced eyes.

My face, too often masked, betrays nothing

human, even as latex pointers sweep

for holes in my teeth, memento mori

from time busied slow with sugar & smoke.

My mind constructs relations between us,

dentist & I, two living bound for life 

with aged teeth. Our lives cross over like

birds flying by chance, intuition, feel,

going round but never to origin.


Janan Chan holds an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Concordia University, Montréal. His creative writing thesis consisted of short auto-fictional stories about a visit to his birthplace Hong Kong, and a reunion with his father. His poems have been published in The Mitre, Soliloquies Anthology, yolk, Warm Milk, and the chapbook Water Lines. He teaches undergraduate English in Shanghai.