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