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35 instructions on Administering nitrous oxide How’s that? says the endodontist who says he’s from Wisconsin. I think he wants to know something. I think I am telling him. Where I’m from. Where it hurts. If it hurts. My lips move. My hard little espresso bean brain is discrete and glossy in my head of yarn. Lips, tongue: say what you will. The first root canal was performed on a Roman soldier with bronze wire a millimeter thick. I think I like the smell of moss. Here comes Violet backlit by dazzle off of Bull Creek. Black muzzle around a red ball. She likes the creek. Minnows fear her. She likes the river. It is cold. She likes the ocean. Sharks peruse her. Once in California I biked to the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought it was a mile away so I biked a mile, took the trail into conifers and emerged, still a mile away, so another mile, and into inlets and emerged, and still a mile away. paul text i-84 -3.indd 35 7/20/10 3:17 PM 36 The continent’s crooked side like climbing a strand of yarn that unspools and gathers below you, orange wool. I cannot ascend here. I cannot ascend here. I descend to the walruses on the beach. The shifting red bridge is their joke but atop their rock their guilty faces are plain. They have no tusks. They are seals. Somewhere an Aryan man from Wisconsin pulls my flesh through a hole in my tooth. Somewhere dead flesh leaves my skull. Here a woman with the most lovely eyelashes is kind to a dog. More. paul text i-84 -3.indd 36 7/20/10 3:17 PM ...

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