Sometimes It’s Good to Stop Talking
i. World Peace
I solved all the problems, all
the road blocks
to world peace, yesterday, while
under the influence
at the dentist. And not
for the first time I can’t remember
how, but the bliss of it remains
keen. I was changing
the world as the surly hygienist
informed me she would be
putting a bridge
in my mouth to keep the two
rows of teeth apart. I was thinking,
okay, yes, good to stop talking,
to open wide,
to how even this bridge
brings things
together. You see how
it begins? I also solved the mystery
of the dysfunctional family,
and my reticence
to take in, fully, my brother’s
relentless decline.
While under —
I dug and dug below the mystery
of disassociation, in time
with the strokes of a drill,
a soft rolling and rolling,
over and over each
tooth. And there, there it was,
all cleared up —
this fracture between us,
the past, the uncertain future
— gone. The bridge
remained. Tears fled
their traps, ducts
on each side of my face.
It happens a lot,
the hygienist said, after …
When she asked after —
any questions?
Yes, I said, yes.
ii. Talking Politics
A beach is a river in my mouth.
Again, I go “under,” a tiny cap
over my nose and the white
noise turns to an
ontological white, and the new
and kind hygienist
whose name, this time, is De Maris,
told me, today
was better than yesterday,
when I ask. Yesterday
the grave stone engraver
told her there would be a longer delay
to deliver the headstone
for her grandmother, Anna,
dead from covid, now, over a year.
De Maris said, in a chiseled English:
it is just not right.
While waiting for the drill I learned
her name is one she dislikes, one
her mother made up, with
two words. Her sister,
is Maris, and her mother
just added the De,
and I think of my mother,
and my let down, learning
my mother named me
after her nurse, after giving birth
because it started with an “E”
Elaine, she prayed, in gratitude.
“Of Mary?” I ask about the De
in De Maris. And she nods,
more alert,
now, to my mouth, of my making
a Mary of Maris, the star
of the sea. Laughing gas
works this way, I’ve come to
find out. I had just breakfasted with a friend,
and, as the air I breathed blanketed
my reserve, I swam into
my friend’s stories of Mary and her search
for unlikely Madonnas in art.
Does Our Lady of Guadalupe
count? I ask, returning to the present,
to De Maris, to word
origins and the tricks they play
on the heart. Adios, for example,
doesn’t only mean
good-bye. By now I’m going, going, gone
back to La Boca, a white mist,
an old barrio by a river in Buenos Aires,
I was young … younger. Young,
I go back to old friends talking
politics. I kept hearing
one after the other exclaim:
gracias adios. Ricardo first,
then Manolo, gracias adios …
I remember thinking:
thank you,
goodbye?
It made no sense, when nobody left.
The sweet stink of the used up
sewers and late night
streets of Argentina enveloped me.
It was so late and so dark,
the only thing to be thankful for
was the junta police eyeing us
asked us
for nothing. “to god,” then,
I said, finally, to myself:
a dios, de Maris, a dios,
again, and again, in my head.
And by that time, the drill landed softly,
gently in my mouth. “Gracias
adios,” I tried to share my relief
with the dentist. Thank god, the fumed air
took me deeper and closer to
the more recent past, instead, grave
diggers, headstones, to my late brother’s
carved box, whose ashes,
just last week, failed
be tossed because no one thought to bring
a screw driver to open the lid
to his box
at the beach.
The dentist was asking if I was feeling
anything, touching my chin. I didn’t
think he meant feelings
in the way I had been
exploring them now, glad
my mouth was frozen open,
so I couldn’t and didn’t say
I was afraid of not feeling
a thing
all those months before
my brother’s death, and the deaths
of others.
About death I felt nothing,
or not enough, then,
but I do, now,
and there won’t be a
chiseled headstone
to remember my brother by.
Tiny bits of bone were gently, carefully,
made smooth to improve my bite,
but, just then,
I didn’t feel a thing,
I thought but didn’t say
to the closed captions
on screen over my head
I didn’t feel a thing,
watching the ever-present war,
on the ubiquitous TV, or is that
the ever present TV. and
the ubiquitous war? Words are wearisome
and blurry, even
out-of-focus, but the proximity to death
is present, and clear,
and not about to stop. I could see
from where I lay, the vague shape
of a very pregnant woman,
a Madonna, on a stretcher,
in a torn-up street, on screen,
a woman and her about-to-be-born
child, both I learned, later,
would die. If I went under, and stayed under,
and never came back,
I felt Mary, the star of the sea’s hand
pressing my shoulder,
gracias a Dios
I had the words for this
after all —
and a drill in my mouth.