Crocodile Tooth Necklace

Inside the tooth necklace is the cavity.
Inside the cavity is the fish bone.
Inside the fish bone there is the mite.
Inside the mite there’s the plankton.
Inside the plankton there’s the salt.
Inside the salt there’s a chemical.
Inside the chemical there’s the chop of the disease
Inside the disease there’s the cure.
Inside the cure there’s the hope.
Inside the hope there’s a smile.
Inside the smile there’s the child.
Inside the child there’s a tooth.
Inside the tooth there’s a cavity.

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This poem was awarded First Place (Primary) for Poetry Object 2016

Judge's Notes:
"This is a remarkable poem which offers a mysterious, primal vision through that most primal rhythm of repetition. Some of the repetitions work deftly with opposites – disease/cure – and others take an oceanic journey through fish bone, plankton, salt. All this performs the idea of change, as well as insistence or propulsion, where each of the poem’s moves takes the reader right into a vast space which is also a very individual small, daily place. In this poem even states and emotions become things and dance together. The poem can be read in so many ways but what struck me powerfully was how it worked with the power of thought and how that links to objects and images. I also connected emotionally with how it moves towards hope but lets us know that in that is also the experience of damage, that we are all a part of. It performs its work as a type of wisdom."
~ Jill Jones, Judge, Poetry Object 2016