Not everything in this collection is dark and depressing, however. The poems I enjoyed most in this collection are, on the surface, about food. "Ode to the Watermelon" is a celebration of enduring symbols and pleasures despite oppression and slaughter. In Palestine, where it is forbidden to fly their own flag, the watermelon with its red and green and black is raised in its stead. There is beautiful language in this poem — ripe, playful, sexy.

The watermelon is a "Ripe conjugationer of water & sun... bandera of the ground,/ language of fields," a symbol of hope, wafting its scent even under the blade. Addressing the watermelon directly,

Men bow their heads, open-mouthed,
to coax the sugar
from beneath your workdress.
Women lift you
to their teeth

And most hopeful,

yours is a sweetness
to outlast any slaughter:
Tongues will lose themselves inside you,
scattering seeds. All over,
the land will hum
with your wild,
raucous blooming.

(Listen to Girmay read from this poem) 

Also celebratory and rich with meaning, and also about food, is "Scent: Love Poem for the Pilon." Food is used wonderfully here in both it's literal and metaphoric senses. The narrator is thankful for the Mercado, for chopped onions, oregano, salt, cloves, red beans, black beans, and rice. She is "thankful for the kitchen table:/ block of wood, & nails,/ & the carpenter's hand," thankful for the pepper grinder, "the clean smell of tomatoes & cilantro."

And most potent and most pregnant with meaning, she is thankful...

...for the pilon
that burst the knots of garlic,
thankful for the way it always worked & worked
under a fist. How, even now, after washes with limes
& soaps, the scent of what it's opened
still lingers there.

The pilon, the pestle and mortar, and the garlic whose smell endures all cleaning attempts, are powerful symbols of the endurance of culture, the lingering aroma that cannot be washed away. Food, perhaps the most tangible, most palatable marker of culture, is used wonderfully in this poem to celebrate its enduring power.

The apparent lack of structure in this collection, and the seemingly arbitrary line breaks, though common in modern poetry, are uncomfortable for me. I prefer more structural constraint in poetry, more devices, both visual and auditory, to set it apart from prose. But that is largely a matter of personal preference. Girmay employs some wonderful imagery and clever language. But most importantly, she tackles serious subject matter, giving voice to those who are often unheard. She is at her best, it seems to me, when approaching serious subject matter obliquely, at an angle, as in "Ode to the Watermelon" and "Scent: Love Poem for the Pilon," rather than head-on, as she does in "Arroz Poetica."

Teeth is, whatever one's stylistic preferences, an important collection of poems.  It's a bold and fresh voice in poetry.