Todd Heldt
On Wanting My Dentist to Accept the Void
When I ask my dentist how long
it will take, he vomits a smile
and tells me, That’s a good question.
I want to rip his utensils
out of my mouth, throttle his neck
and say that the only good question
is one that cannot be answered.
So I listen to his Christian
radio station in silence and admire
the gold cross pinned to his lapel.
We are the struggle of function
and philosophy, a wound-up arm
aimed at the edge of the cosmos.
I want to land a bullshit fist
knuckled in the iron of know-how
on the rugged jawline of normal,
and I need him to understand.
But he seems content to be
a dentist and does not recognize
the supernova threat we confront.
On his father’s right hand Jesus tells me
forgive everyone everything,
even aspartame they offer
instead of cane sugar’s soul-sweat work.
I used to study my Bible,
and think I got it, and pray to die
before it all stopped making sense.
I still have not figured out why
we exist or what we are supposed
to be doing down here on our own.
Over the gurgling suck of the vacuum
I mumble he proves creation
pointless, and if we must submit
because the blueprints were drawn with no ruler
I would just as soon my teeth fall out.
He smiles his toothy grin, and says,
It will take a long time. I don’t mind.
I am used to this waiting.
Most of my life I’ve been boxing
with God, and my dentist is the worst
kind of coach—Keep your guard up,
he tells me. No kidding, I say,
as if sugar weren’t sweet, this were
all easy, and the paintings
on his walls were art. The answer
I want cannot be answered,
and he does not seem to realize
a question has even been asked.
If he drills down to my softest spot,
we will still never get anywhere.
I will suffer my best in silence.
It hurts when the blows rain down
but I keep my guard up. No matter
who is on the right, if I’m wrong
God’s got a wicked left hook.
Todd Heldt is the author of Card Tricks for the Starving (Ghost Road Press, 2009). His work has appeared in 2AM Muse, Blast Furnace, Chiron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Fear of Monkeys, Gyroscope Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many other journals. Heldt is a librarian in Chicago.
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