Sedation Dentistry

Sedation Dentistry

Allow me to force you to relax.
How’s that sound. I am pleased to offer
you sedation while I poke around your mouth.

Who likes a stranger’s fingers
sliding along their gums. Well, I’m still
going in there, but wouldn’t you rather not

remember it. What I am offering
to you is dulled sensation, watered-down
consciousness and an unpleasant experience

made palatable. You’ll hear the ping
of the floss freeing itself from between
your teeth, the squeak of my gloves on enamel.

Whose teeth. Whose blood and spit.
Yours, but you won’t know it. So many
discomforts can be avoided with sedation.

Lie back in your body as if it were
a hammock. Accept this gift on behalf
of dentists for the terror we’ve caused you.

Arrows

Arrows

Thank God for the arrows. What would
we do without them. We wouldn’t know

where to turn. Right or left, and how many
times. Who would warn us that the road

sharply veers. Suddenly, all exits within
a building would be uncertain. Restrooms

unlocatable. Parking structures sites of
exile without agents of decision, direction.

And death. Erase the arrows, and disarm
Robin Hood, soften and slow Diana,

her followers. We have this need: to launch
our gaze out in front of us, to follow

its trajectory. Tell us where to go, where
we are meant to go. We chase the arrow

offscreen to find what we have pierced.
We use it to search, to stab into the abyss

of the computer. Our cursor navigates,
a lantern, the tip of a spear, a stemless arrow.

And we unearth arrowheads from the lawn,
place them in a palm like stony goldfish

who have stopped moving. What do you
want of me. What are you pointing me toward.