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Poem-a-day

Egg Tooth

Ears are the eyes on the sides of your head. 
Memory lives here, between these apostrophes. 
As if to predict music, the ear contains a drum.

A musical note calling out for the shape of music. 
For the coin in the slot to unlock the gears. 
For the egg with a horse in it.

Some people are born addicted to sense. 
Some are born infected with silence. 
Poetry is an-ant-ant-anti-antibiotic.

“A horse pill.” 
Yes, there is an actual horse in this pill. 
Imagine it like a fetus pressed to the shell.

The reason there are no unicorns is just that. 
This is the egg tooth. 
And you, what did you pay to enter this world?

Copyright © 2025 by Benjamin Garcia. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 24, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Benjamin Garcia

Benjamin Garcia
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Randall Mann is the Guest Editor of August. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mann about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
When I Heard at the Close of Day Walt Whitman
Origins [from The Garden] (audio only) Louise Glück
Casey at the Bat Ernest Lawrence Thayer
The Haunted Palace Edgar Allan Poe
Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908 David Wojahn
The Celestial Surgeon Robert Louis Stevenson
When Fannie Lou Hamer Said Mahogany L. Browne
Thank You Jesus Teri Ellen Cross Davis
All the Bright Illusions Jan Schreiber
Alice at Seventeen: Like a Blind Child Darcy Cummings

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