Boy Getting Back at the Dentist

The tooth tinkled on the silver plate,
dropped like jewelry, a tinkle heard  
weekly sometimes, these periodic extractions,  
they are for orderly growth, they said.  
 
With his arm, he would hold my head against  
his chest like a vise and with pliers  
rocking the unready in its socket  
side to side until I hear it again  
 
the tinkle on the silver plate while  
he dabs to stop the flow of blood,  
but this one time he dabbed, hard and awhile,  
worry crossing his face as he wedged  
 
the cotton pillow into the gap  
between teeth, that gape in the flesh  
I would avoid tonguing for weeks, now  
globules of blood plopped into the spit bowl  
 
like egg yolk high and healthy but dark,  
lying, I looked up at the distraught doctor,  
I smiled, though weak, vengeance for those weeks,  
pleased that I have troubled this god in white.