Julia C. Alter
Toilet Paper Panic
We clear out the shelves
when we’re forced to face ourselves
as human. We are now reminded
that our death waits inside us,
that our bodies make waste,
and what would happen
if we couldn’t wipe it clean.
In town I pass street art—a circle
of beasts and birds, and the words
we are not superior. It was there before
the virus. It feels subversive to be out
walking in the sun, like I should bolt
the doors around myself in the dark.
What if we eliminate it, and it doesn’t disappear?
We’ve forgotten we can dig a ditch and bury it.
We can use leaves, already fallen.
We’re so scared of holes, of our own
ancient dirt, of burials. Unprepared
to digest what we’re taking in. We say scat
and we mean feces, jazz—the tiny line
between chaos and order—or we mean
go away. Night soil, manure without moonlight.
Extruded from an animal, like we were.
No pasta, beans or paper products are coming
to our rescue. We’re kings and queens
on our lonely thrones, behind locked doors.
We flush it down into porcelain—
then the rivers, then the oceans.
This shit will break your heart.
—Submitted on 03/25/2020
Julia C. Alter‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Foundry, Yemassee, Crab Orchard Review, Jet Fuel, the The Boiler, and other journals. She lives and writes in Burlington, Vt. Online at alterpoetry.com.
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