My Dentist
for Jabes

Wasn’t it Pynchon, in V, who
floated the notion that dentistry
was the mid-century answer

to Psychiatry? (See the chapter
in which Rachel Owlglass
Gets a Nose Job. Or is it the one

where Stencil simply gets Dentistry?)
Go read V again, lazy citizen!
Do your own research!

And my dentist was talking
and one of the great things
about my dentist is he

steps back and lets me talk
too, whatever he or I
have in my mouth.

My dentist was, not
that long ago, a
San Francisco Fireman

of Assyrian decent.
He is a Christian
(of an Assyrian sort).

The other firemen called
him a Sand Nigger.
(Check out the SFFD’s record

on tolerance, sometime.) And now
he’s telling me all
about how great the Bill

Moyers series on the
right wing has been, & how it
reminds him of what it means

to be an American. I
agree, although I’ve seen
none of it, explain

I only watch baseball
& the occasional movie on TV if
there aren’t any commercials, that

I don’t even listen to
the emerging liberal radio
because I get better

information from the Texas
& Canadian songwriters
they play on KPIG. People

talking about the decisions that
will kill us all depress me
enormously. I’d rather

hear it in a song. Preferably
with a baseball game

on TV in the background,
and those nattering “commentators”
fully muted.