Boy Getting Back at the Dentist

by Vincent R. Pozon

The tooth tinkled on the silver plate,
dropped like jewelry, a tinkle heard
weekly sometimes, these periodic extractions,
they are for orderly growth, they said.

With his arm, he would hold my head against
his chest like a vise and with pliers
rocking the unready in its socket
side to side until I hear it again

the tinkle on the silver plate while
he dabs to stop the flow of blood,
but this one time he dabbed, hard and awhile,
worry crossing his face as he wedged

the cotton pillow into the gap
between teeth, that gape in the flesh
I would avoid tonguing for weeks, now
globules of blood plopped into the spit bowl

like egg yolk high and healthy but dark,
lying, I looked up at the distraught doctor,
I smiled, though weak, vengeance for those weeks,
pleased that I have troubled this god in white.