HEARTLAND
GLITTER ROT i still brush my canines at night erase the lush green from my gums and hack up blood down the sink, still exit the bathroom and become undone on the bed in a white nightgown that is perpetually backlit by many nights of running out of the rambler and through the street, slick and suburban— no, this is small-town america on the face of it where the graves on the corner next to the video store glow at night, mossy and jade, and i fi d myself there, the cold moon air splashed upon the backs of my calves, crying out through exit wounds, groveling in the dirt with blood in my teeth and serpent eyes above that watch, frozen, from their tomb stay, husband-and-wife gray, like the runoff iver that fli kered along the asphalt banks, through the town to the rambler, back to the bathroom and the white nightgown— i come out of the wake, coughing up a pink toilet cover, now waterlogged with green and under the hum of the video store blocks away, my canines shimmer, one long exposure ray that carries through night after night
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