Super-Sized Series

 Molars, Wisdom Teeth and Crowns

 

AFTER ORAL SURGERY by Barbara Crooker

I start to forget how much I like to eat:
baguettes shattering into splinters;
salted popcorn, its kernels lethal
now; oatmeal cookies, crumbs

that infiltrate the gaping crater.
Now I’m in the land of bland, living
on creamed soups, mashed potatoes,
coddled eggs. . . . Anything with cayenne,

tabasco, jalapeños would electrify
these throbbing open sockets. . . .
Even though I’m almost a vegetarian,
I start to dream about steak, charbroiled,

sputtering and hissing, blood pooling
on the plate. I might as well imagine
eating my pillow. Night seems endless,
stomach mumbling, talking out loud.
I envy those models in commercials
whose encounters with food
border on the pornographic.
They never chew or swallow,

but oh, what ecstasies of foreplay.
Meanwhile, my poor gums thrum
with pain. What I wouldn’t give for one
brief tryst with a hot slice of buttered toast.

Nothing is More Dangerous Than a Monty Python Skit by Elaine Sorrentino

With a quick tap, tap, tap
he chisels little bits of jaw bone
and extracts my wisdom teeth
one visit at a time.
No need to miss school for this.
He sends a gauze-packed mouth
home with instructions
to avoid drinking through a straw
for fear of sucking stitches
he so skillfully sutured
right out of their purpose.
No warning against watching
the Monty Python skit
about hunting mosquitoes in the wild,
where the gag line
nothing is more dangerous
than a wounded mosquito
inspires uncontrolled laughter,
forces my aching mouth wide,
and unravels his meticulous needlework.


No One Will Marry You by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

When I was very young, one of my teeth had to be removed. It was in the upper left corner of my mouth. I guess I was in some kind of pain. I was sure the pain would go away on its own, but my mother was determined to seek the dentist’s advice.  So she took me to see the dentist. His office was on the first floor of a very old building. You had to climb a dark, narrow staircase to reach his place.

I was mortally afraid of dentists and doctors. The fear of doctors was inherited from my father! The dentist’s office was crowded with all kinds of intimidating paraphernalia. I had to sit in the chair and open my mouth as wide as I possibly could. When I see a picture of a hippopotamus with its mouth wide open, my mind paints an image of what I must have looked like those many years ago.

After examining the tooth, the dentist pronounced the verdict. The tooth must be removed. I kept insisting that there surely must be another way to save the tooth. He assured me that he could put a cap to cover the gap left behind by the removed tooth. I resisted that too. It would mean another procedure and perhaps involve more pain.

The dentist said if I left the gap without a cap, my smile would be affected and no one would marry me. I replied that I didn’t care because I was sure there would be at least one man who didn’t care either, and would love me anyway.  I refused to have the cap inserted into my mouth. Like my father, I had a great fear of placing foreign objects into any part of my body, unless I was dying!

I have been married now for forty-four years and there is still a small gap where my tooth originally was.  I wish I had invited the dentist for my wedding.


My Classmate’s Son Yanks My Molar Fifteen Days before my 83rd Birthday by Sharon Waller Knutson

The dentist is fit
as a fiddle at fifty 
something, just like 
I was when I first visited
his new practice 
after we moved
to Queen Valley.

When I told him 
25 years ago,
I came from Idaho
Falls, he said I must
have gone to school
with his wife. He didn’t
flinch when I told him
his father was in my high
school civics class.

He said his father
was practicing medicine
in Utah and he was
the youngest of six
sons, all working
in the medical field.

He x-rayed my teeth.
Nothing wrong.
The pain came from
a sinus infection.
He wrote me a prescription 
for antibiotics.

When I was 65, he pulled
two teeth and when
I fainted he forgot
I was the age of his father
and told me I was young
and healthy and would be fine.
His face fell when I handed
his billing lady my Medicare Card 
to get my senior citizen discount.

Despite my 18-year absence,
this time he remembers.
The receptionist calls, Doctor,
your father’s friend is here.
His assistant, who whisks me
off to the guillotine says,
He told us all about you.

The dentist shows up smiling,
Surprised to see you after all this
time. I tell him we are no longer
traveling to Idaho every summer
and he says his father has neuropathy
in his feet like me but still gardens
before he gets down to business.

The molar pops out with one pull.
And I don’t faint, I barely bleed
and I feel no pain during or after.
My body is like the jalopy I drove
after I got my license at fourteen.
It’s used to all the mileage, dents
and cracks in the windshield
and when fixed feels brand new again.



Dental Sonnet by Mary Ellen Talley

Cleaning out a bathroom drawer, I find
four hidden molars in a plastic pouch.
I recall that oral surgeon’s office,
and the day I spied your first tattoos.

I took you to that final youth appointment.
The extraction. I waited until you woke. 
Startled at you in short-sleeves lying there,
I gasped, “You have a tattoo on your arm.

In fact, on both your arms.” And you replied,
“Eighteen is the legal age.” I studied
the cartoon that said, I yam what I yam,
and grasped this rite of passage as my own.

Two dental hygienists left the room to whisper-
giggle at what “the mother” hadn’t known.

FLIGHT by Wilda Morris

I come tired to the dentist's chair
wishing to nap while waiting
for Novocain to take effect.
The dental assistant, like an airline
stewardess, persistently pesters.
Instead of offering coffee, cola,
or orange juice, she pokes
and probes to see if there is still
feeling in my gums. I give up
and begin reading Billy Collins'
The Apple That Astonished Paris
to pass time. The dentist returns.
Overhead lights come on.
Motor noises fill my ears.
I bite down on red wax, slightly
tougher than airline chicken,
then on something lavender, 
with the consistency 
of solidified mashed potatoes
eaten between Chicago and Frankfort.
I disembark, the taste of a twelve-hour flight
in my mouth. I look for my luggage.


A Dentist in America by Joe Cottonwood

Dr. Song never sings 
but mumbles in rough English 
with a wince and a dimple
he was an orphan in Korea. 
He fills three teeth, prepares one crown, 
grumbles that my beard 
(he calls it shrubbery) is dirty, 
my cavities are too far back, 
my tongue too big always seeking his drill. 

I wonder what his childhood was like 
in America. I bet tough as an adoptee
ending strong with a girlfriend because 
he tells me he has a three-year-old daughter 
who will become a dentist like him. 
I’d advise him not to count on it 
if I could speak with his fingers 
between my lips.

Dr. Song is not good with people 
but he is good people. And so is 
his daughter who takes over the practice. 
I recount how her father would complain 
about my shrubbery, my inquisitive tongue.
“He was rude,” she laughs. “But he was right.”

His fillings are holding just fine. 
She’s pregnant, says it’s a girl.

Previously published in Muddy River Poetry Review


Dentist’s Waiting Room by Rachael Z. Ikins 

I listen to parents threaten their kindergartner.
If she doesn't stop sucking her thumb,
she will have buck teeth. Oh, yes.

Leave her be! I do not shout.
Most people stop thumb-sucking by age 10.
There are threats enough in the world to cause
a child nightmares. Her teeth are only babies,

for the tooth fairy in the next years.
Permanent will come slower, stronger, like trees,
able to resist thumbs. Most of us who chose our thumb
were persecuted for it.  by parents

of five and six year old children with color-coordinated pacifiers
to match all their outfits, crammed into too-small
strollers, knees to chins, obesity around the corner.

Leave her be! I do not shout. She makes quick eye contact,
blue eyes flit across my green ones, surface barely ruffled.
I can tell she doesn't care if she has buck-teeth. I can
tell she doesn't know what those are. Her father
promises to slather "disgusting tasting gunk" on her beloved

digit. 
Adults suck other things, tobacco alcohol, food, medicines
 to cure depression or anxiety.
Uncurable anxiety rooted in interference.

A girl just beyond the back door of babyhood. A child who has
taught herself comfort. She is independent. She needs to buy
nothing, no accessories but her thumbs. They don't cause cavities. You can even

hook one in the air to get a ride out into the big world.
Not without threat, the world beyond the thumb, but then
she has everything she needs.