Don't Pay for White Teeth

Kind of fingering the edge of the page
and pressing my lips against the window
before the train stopped
reminded me of one time in Magnolia.

I was a little boy. A very a little boy
and it was time for a cleaning.
I hate the dentist.

The waiting area, in my memory, was somehow smokey.
My
Heart beat fast.
A receptionist gestured to my mother;
My mother sent me on my way

I stared back at her; she was fingering the pages of a magazine.

"Before long" is an absolutely incorrect thing to say.
Time grows old in a dentist's chair.
After the hygienist finished her probing and prodding
The real dentist came inside.

He was a stupidly old man.
His beard dragged on the floor behind him down the narrow hall.
He entered the room and shut the door behind him.
He started talking like a fool.
"Dribbly-Bwibbly-Gibbly-Mimbly"
And some more of this and that
Singy songy old man banter.

I started shaking in the seat as he went for his tools
With his geriatric hand.
He was shaking too--
Like a rotten apple lost in a tree top.

...
[y]