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the excavator

I am climbing the hill
holding hands with a man
who isn’t my son’s father. Tonight,
the moon is a wrecking ball. 
Cresting, I see the big machine
bathed in silver light. Stars float
like dust motes swirling a black window
of sky. A strange construction site.
We find ourselves here, without
any scaffolding in the middle
of the night on a hill in a town
far from my baby,
who would be saying
Arm! Boom! Bucket!
Who would be saying
Scoop it!  Lift it! Dump it out!
Who would be saying
More work!
Tomorrow I’ll be back home
with him and his dad, pushing
his stroller up the hill to watch
the workers on Church Street,
hobbling over asphalt
that’s been hacked up and crumbled
for months. Neon safety vests,
a different kind of sweat,
and different cigarettes. Here,
there is only freshly shifted earth,
only a new hole. I could be buried
in a pile of rubble, or scooped up
out of the ground.
Picture
John Adams Whipple. The Moon, 1857-60. Salted paper print from glass negative. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Julia C. Alter is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Recent poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from Palette Poetry, Crab Creek Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Vermont with her partner and young son. Her website is www.alterpoetry.com.
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Issue Thirteen
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