The Checkup

(A Symphony for a Dental Hygienist)

It’s the waiting that intimidates you:
the walls shelved with pamphlets—
root canal treatment, gum disease, X-ray safety. 
Then the office door opens 
like an overture for nerves
when she calls your name.

Your feet, already Novocain numb 
from crossing them,
press down the Indian bed of nails
as you walk by the receptionist's counter 
to the dental room,
the one with a three-horse-powered vinyl chair
and crane dental light
for a head-and-body tilt devised for excavation.
Of course, there are the instruments,
plastic-wrapped on the metal tray,
alongside the latex gloves and gauzy goggles.

The performance begins with X-rays,
an allegro for two cardboard wings
and your gag reflex;
then your memory is jarred loose
by the Scaler, an andante of scraping and foraging
for bacon bits, orange pulp and toasted crumbs,
your mouth fixed in a capital O
while the saliva ejector hangs from your lower lip,
sucking a maelstrom of spittle,
and the lamp beams down like a car's headlights
just beneath the ceiling tiles and exhaust fan.
There’s nowhere else to stare, 
except at her face.

By now you know the subtle shades of her eyes
better than you know your wife’s –
the blemishes on her brow
and other indelicacies with a Lilliputian scrutiny 
as she lavages your mouth with the Cavitron,
con moto moderato, eradicating coffee stains
with a crescendo that rivals timpani.

Finally, you have made it to the finale
of flossing and electric brushing,
an allegretto of rinsing and sucking,
the metallic taste flowing from your molars
and bicuspids raked and plowed clean.

The concert concludes 
with the maestro’s two-minute coup d' oeil.
"I’ll see you in six months" resounds like applause,
and you whisk out the door, vivace!
with toothpaste, brush and floss in hand,
and with no encore.

“The Checkup” was originally published in Spoon River Quarterly, 1991.