Boy Scouts of America

(and elsewhere) 

She shot me with the novocaine

the warmest funniest woman 

my new Cuban dentist friend

then she told me in a nutshell 

as I went numb

about her life of limits, from
grandfather to father to husband;  

she couldn’t do anyone’s teeth 

couldn’t deaden a man’s mouth 

in Cuba. 

But that's over; in a nutshell—she ended it. 

I asked for another two shots

of novocaine, because I couldn’t take it

then I lay there in the chair and thought

(as she whistled, getting her silver diggers 

and pokers out of the autoclave)

of all she’d had to take 

because of misogyny. 

Misogyny. 

Some men are gonna need surgery. 
Maybe even a dictionary.