Adrian Ernesto Cepeda: Will the Numbing Never End?

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Poet with No Insurance in the Chair at the Dentist’s Office

Sometimes it feels like

taking your car

to the auto mechanic

instead of having

your four wheels up

there tune up, inspected

my four molars, mouth

open waited for the bad

news diagnosis, wondering

how much is this going

to cost me? The pain appears

chewing me, when I eat.

grinding me when I sleep.

stinging me when I wait

for the next shot. Can you

hear that drilling sound,

from where you are

standing, reading this?

Resounding like an engine

revving exhausted,

each drill that goes deeper

echoes the emptying

of my bank account. I feel

the biting overdraft, in

my mouth. The debt

like the pain remains,

broke deeper still, repeat

to rinse, throbbing eternally

wondering how am I

ever going to pay for

this, will the numbing

never end?

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Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of Flashes & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press, the poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time from Red Mare Press and the erotic love poems collection Between the Spine published with Picture Show Press. 

Adrian is an LA Poet is a graduate of the MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife. You can connect with Adrian on his website: http://www.adrianernestocepeda.com/