Nitrous

"Nitrous oxide" sounds like rust,

    and not like magic dental dust.

The periodontist and his assistant

enter the chamber on padded feet

shuffling like conspirators.

Thinking to soothe my fears

they humor me with smiles at my feeble jokes,

then lower me in the chair to the sacrificial position.

Assisting, Lynn straps a plastic nose on me,

a clown's mask to keep me laughing;

and she drops in a cylinder of gas –

hissing, numbing stuff.

Hungry for oblivion, I gulp it down in cold chunks,

hoping my brain won't freeze.

The world and my politeness abide

long enough for me to offer my cooperation.

Gentle, dental, Dr. Joe suggests how I might hold my jaw.

I waggle it once before it disappears into a bleary mist.

He stretches open my mouth

like you would carry home a fish,

a thumb hooked in the lip.

Next, the needles,

to push some 'cain into my shallow palate

along its intricate capillary trellis.

Joe pinches my cheek to distract me

from the hot pricks that quickly chill.

I grab Lynn's arm to humanize

the swift transformation, its tiny orgasm,

the rose I swallow with all its thorns.

Fooled into feeling safe, impervious,

I giggle, seeing myself as the anatomical model

of the nerves that shows the face enormous

with its quantities of sensation.

From oral to erotic to oral:

lips that would kiss flatten over my teeth,

my mischievous tongue lolls and won't obey,

a charming stranger lost in her own house.

My ears go next,

tuning the radio into a thin buzz,

a syrup without recognizable meaning

of voice or note, simply sound,

an irritated bandwidth.

Then my eyes:

I don't know whether to look or not,

whether to open or close them

on the bright abstract:

the green gowns and pink faces

of my tormentors.

To keep from knowing them or their intentions

I hold a visual world away,

which I solely inhabit,

vaguely wandering in the cold-starred swirl

of my own imagery.

In this unknown planet, his patient,

Joe operates.

At first, uncertain of my departure,

he probes delicately with picks,

the smallest of his sharp surgery.

He mumbles to Lynn in code

I'll never understand.

As I lie cradled at his lap,

my ear at his stomach,

his digestion mutters to me

in a language I do know,

in the very voice of his mouth!

I laugh – who knows how loud? --

at my perception,

and in sheer freedom from the need to feel.

Joe digs deeper,

a miner grunting at his excavations.

Abstractly I taste the blood

of my flayed gums,

and hear the violent scrapes

that pull reluctant flesh from bone,

flinging my head about like a doll's.

I can't possibly care.

When my lids flicker open,

I see two faces bent over mine,

an intimate audience to

the crimson-curtained theatre of my mouth,

its pale heroines

to save from evil decay;

in the wings the flesh laid open

over arches of bone.

Joe works in earnest now:

a persistent ivory root resists the knife.

He grasps my slackened face

in his arm to get a grip,

smashing my nose and cheek to his chest,

carrying my head like a stolen melon

across a moonlit field.

The motion stops,

something yielded, something done.

"Now, let's make some noise," he chuckles,

reaching for the drill.

I shudder, remembering every exquisitely aimed touch

I ever thrilled to.

The giant metal insect palps my lip --

a serious tickler --

then buzzes furiously inside like it can't get out.

The singed enamel stinks like burning hair.

The closing now:

Joe stitches me like a torn quilt,

mopping up with rough gauze swabs.

The suction tip kisses me again

and again with its tiny mouth.

“Finished!"

I pant as at the race's end.

Transcendent, flying in my magic cloak,

I surge up victorious over the wounds,

pain's dancing partner.

                             1994