An Existential Crisis at the Dentist

Clean, clean, clean
is the hospital in my mouth
with its starch, square gowns,
unforgiving off-white floors that stiffen your feet
that were once so accepted in your bed
like a tundra spoon on a wet warm tongue
things that sound like construction tools graze my cheeks
and rubber fingers, artificial on my teeth.
Noises are so different for me now;
mirages, that sound like a hybrid of a buzz saw and a hatchet,
but really they make me
clean, clean, clean
but maybe I want to be crooked,
maybe I want yellow and black piano keys
rotting ivory, decayed by laughter and life
gaps as wide as parking spaces
maybe I want to be everything you don’t want.
Because noises are so different now;
the people are so different now
they’re all

clean, clean, clean.

-anna sluder

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