Tuesday, August 9, 2016




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. 


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