The fact of the matter is
I don't have dentures.
I have all my teeth.
Because my mother made
me go to the dentist every
six months as a child.
It was a horribly cruel
ritual,
which she carried out with relish.
It was her kismet to send me
to the torture chamber
because she loved me.
It was my kismet to
submit,
until I turned sixteen.
And then I refused.
So my mother sold me off
to a moped gang.
she thought this would
ripen me to remorse,
and I would return
a more pliant child.
But I fooled her.
I liked the moped gang.
Elderly folk,
with too much time on their
hands,
who sped up and down
Larpenteur Avenue,
shaking down greenhouses
and truck farmers.
The only drawback
was you had to have dentures
to gain full membership
in the gang.
So I sucked in my lips
and pretended.
It worked.
Since most of the gang members
were nearly blind as a bat anyways.
I became leader of the moped gang
at age 19.
Now at the sunset of my life
I go to the dentist every month.
A perky dental hygienist cleans
and polishes my teeth as I sit
in a very comfortable leather
chair. She smells of sweet apples
in the fall.
I put my mother's cremated remains in
very rare and expensive jade jar
and donated it to the University of Minnesota
School of Dentistry.
They have it out in their lobby.
Kismet, mommy, kismet.
