The Chair

The old Hitachi dual cassette was painand elegant with age, and the branches were,and the sash window was open with pain,and the afternoon was adequate, and pain.

Children rollerskating in the street were painand the hum of the imminent sunset was.Would I say today was, and all today's heirs?Yes, I would bet tomorrow morning on it.

My mouth these many years was wealthy with pain.For so many years, I thought prodigal meantdestined to return transformed and beloved.The dentist doesn't ask me where I've been.

I'm tired of the war, I wanted to say,but my jaw fell slack, so he buried the nerve,finding in his caulking gun of compositethe inverse of a tooth, the way a good eye

can find intemperate horses gallopingwithin a block of marble. Then the x-rays.I've been setting off supermarket alarmslately, I wanted to say, to tell someone.

Whose are the dreams I'm having? I'm never thereon the balcony, with free jazz and treason.Then the pain was replaced with its memory,which is to say that nothing ever changes.

He left. The hygienist grew ungenerouswith silence. I rinsed with something glowing green.You know she talks about you sometimes? she said.Who does? I said.