WEBVTT

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I figured I don't--

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I don't actually need
my distance glasses

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since I can't see anything.

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This is what I call an essay.

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It's called "A Little Tooth."

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"The lady in the white
mask hits a lever,

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and the blue plastic
lounger swings back.

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I'm no longer talking about
how nice the weather has

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been lately.

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Now, I'm an animal halfway
across the interstate.

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I cross my ankles and fold
my hands across my lap,

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trying to appear relaxed.

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Christ, it's only
a teeth cleaning.

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I eye the contraptions-- the
bowl where you spit the bloody

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remains of your mouth, the
gleaming set of silver pokey

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things--

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how many ways can
you poke and scrape?

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Here are all the tubes for
sucking out your insides.

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I'm feeling a little exposed.

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I like my spit.

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My spit is who I am.

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I'm made with spit and clay.

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That's the sum of me,
and don't fuck with it.

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Everything else is hooey--
all the little successes,

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and failures, and
things on paper.

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Love, huh?

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Back in the old days, they
cleaned your teeth nicely--

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sweet toothpaste
and a gentle brush,

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that whirred kindly,
and ineffectively.

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A bad day would
include fluoride.

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That's it-- three
months smiling in a wax

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mold filled with axle
grease, but other than that,

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piece of cake.

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Here at Family Dentistry,
everything is changed, spiffy.

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In the waiting room, I
was staring melancholicly

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at the pamphlets, suggestions of
illness, suggestions of remedy,

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when the TV came on.

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Oh good, I thought, the
Today Show-- a chance

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to be with the bright and happy.

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But no, it was a dental video.

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I didn't know such
things existed.

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An animated paintbrush
whisked an ugly mouth

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into something pretty.

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Now, in the examination
room, with the calm apricot

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wallpaper, and the
sign that says,

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ominously, "Painless Dentist."

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the hygienist is about
to clean my teeth

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with her newfangled
invisible pain machine.

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It's a sonic X-ray chainsaw
diamond cutter laceration

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needle.

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I've got my mouth
open as wide as I can,

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and my hands are holding
the sides of the chair now,

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sweaty and tense.

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And the suction tube is pulling
at the bottom of my mouth,

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like a small thirsty animal.

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And the hygienist descends
with the sonic needle,

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and the screech of
cleanliness fills my head--

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back and forth and
weedle, weedle,

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weedle into the small
and unlikely places,

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surprised out of their dark
perfectly natural hiding.

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And all of a sudden, 'sensitive
there?', she asks casually,

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and writes something down on
my chart, goes back to it.

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I flashed back to high
school, to the entreaties

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of the football captain.

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Just jump on.

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Look it.

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It's almost morning already.

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He was promising
something-- joie de vivre?

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Not exactly, but a kind of
membership to a club where

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people did things--

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action.

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This was something
encouraging and appealing.

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15 years later, a new
football captain came calling,

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or actually not calling.

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He hadn't called all day--

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the day he was
supposed to visit me.

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I spent eight hours
painting a watercolor

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of a beautiful sleeping dunce,
hovering over a quiet village.

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When he finally did call from
his friend's apartment nearby,

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he had no apology, but he
did invite me to a party.

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I took a brave step by
saying, you come over here.

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We've got to talk about this.

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No, he said.

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I fell into a trance.

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I got off the phone,
put on a mini skirt,

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and went to the party.

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There, since it
was his birthday,

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I gave him another painting I
had made especially for him--

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this one of a
beautiful empty room.

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I talked boldly, but not exactly
wittily to all his friends.

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They had nicknames
like Ace and Bandage,

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and their girlfriends, who
didn't have names at all.

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I should know the glory
of science and industry.

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I want to trust, but
my body is trembling.

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The hygienist has pulled
out something new.

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It's a little camera
the size of a pen.

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With it, she rummages around
my mouth cinematically.

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The images play on the TV screen
suspended from the ceiling.

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Has this ever happened to you?

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Is your mouth shaped
like a heart, too?

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Is it your private mouth, the
one where you store your teeth,

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and all the words
you didn't say,

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and some of the words you
finally did say, could say,

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and it was a good
thing that you had?

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Is your mouth the place
where you've made love known?

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And where you've said bitter,
horrible things to those

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you love the most?

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Is your mouth where
you store grief

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about your mother and father?

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And where your first poem-- and
where the first poem you ever

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wrote resides--

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Quiet red and blue little cells?

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And is your mouth a
reservoir of each nightmare

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and each sweet dream?

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And will your mouth die
brutally with you when you go?

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Is your mouth, as they
say, the final frontier

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where you keep the big stack
of stuff that is you, and you

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dole it out to husband,
lover, child, friend--

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not all of it, just some
of it here and there?

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On the screen, one
of my molars appears,

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side turned and out of focus.

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I never knew it
looked like that--

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a big white bone and
a silver blanket,

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surrounded by pinkness,
wet and obscene.

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Once I was admitted into the
realm of cleanliness and order

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for about two months, and
then one day, evicted.

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The tall old man in tennis
whites, a white mustache,

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and a pith helmet held
his hands behind his back

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and said that, alas, due
to the rain this season,

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he was going to have
to let me go early.

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Gone from my job as locker
girl at the lawn tennis club,

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the place where I
wore kelly green,

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back into the world of
random violence-- cavities.

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Order is beauty, even when you
are 17 and action oriented.

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Order and men in white, and
you want to be part of that

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if you can because
you, your dark heart,

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shaped like a mouth, always
feel like an impostor

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at times like this.

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If you could only really
become your clothes--

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the right shirt, what do
you wear to an abortion?

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What do you wear to tell your
boyfriend of this gentle virus?

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I looked at the man
in tennis whites

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and his drippy blue eyes,
distant and unknown to me,

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and hoped, for a second,
that I could still

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fit in like a puzzle piece,
a cup in a bigger cup,

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and that if I wore the outfit,
if I above all lied about it,

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the man in the white jacket
would let me stay on.

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'But sir, it's sunny all
the time', I ventured.

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The suspiciously
innocuous person

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at the dentist's has finished
taking the video of my teeth.

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She's made stills
of some of them,

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and those stills are
displayed on the screen, four

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separate images, my teeth
as game show contestants,

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and there's a second
channel with two more teeth.

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Are these particularly
good teeth?

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I'm worried maybe
that's not the case.

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I'm getting a funny feeling.

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When the dentist
himself arrives,

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I am somewhere beyond cowardly.

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I'm staring at my
massive teeth on TV,

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and my hair is scribbled and
scrambled by the headrest.

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Pamphlets on expensive
dental procedures

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are in my purse, which is on
the floor along with my jacket.

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This little pile of
my things shames me."

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