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Poetry

18 April, 2023

Julia C. Alter

I’m buying him the eight-dollar bath bomb

because he got two shots in his arm and screamed

I feel like I’m dying, mommy!

as I held his elbows down. He loves the fizz 

and tingle on his skin, how he never knows 

what kind of creature is hiding in there 

when it all dissolves.


The woman at the fancy gift shop lets us know 

her bunny’s name is the same as my son’s.

I tell her I call my son my bunny, but don’t tell her

I call my asshole my bunny hole, and that I show

my bunny hole to strangers on the internet for money

I don’t need. Strangers in their mother’s basements,

strangers married to MILFs they’ve stopped fucking.

Strangers with dead mothers, mothers on drugs, 

and mothers who never hugged them. Strangers 

who call me baby girl, and strangers who call me mommy.


There’s a coyote in the field tonight

that may have rabies, or else has lost

its mother. It just keeps circling—

looking back at me.


Julia C. Alter received her MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in journals including The Southern Humanities Review, The Raleigh Review, Crab Creek Review, Foundry, Sixth Finch, Palette Poetry, The Gigantic Sequins and elsewhere. She lives in Vermont with her son. Find her at www.alterpoetry.com.