To avoid obsolescence, I go to the dentist. Like I was told to—by the dentist. The machine is to dig some rot out of me. While the doctor needles me numb, the hygienist holds / her hand to my shoulder. I try to remember / the last time a stranger touched me / like this. Not asking. Not unwelcome. Above my open mouth, a man / on television in a king-size tie. He mounts the stage, which another man once called all the world. So: a man mounts the world. The machine on my teeth sounds like a Twilight Zone radio zapped / alive by alien frequency. Which is to say: the machine sounds like the machine. Elsewhere, all the world bows / to the staged man. As the curtains kiss, the hygienist dips her sucky-straw into my sublingual spit. Close, she says, and I obey. The machine needs and so authors my decay.


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