by

Erin M.
Virgil

VOLUME 1
 Poems

o by
Erin M. Virgil
______________
Volume One

BoulderPublications.com
Boulder, Colorado U.S.A.
2010

o
Copyright © 2010 Erin M. Virgil
eBook design by Steve McMichael / boulderpublications.com
contents
Introduction....................................................... 2
Relevant portents............................................... 3
Dream #3........................................................... 5
paranormal sonnet............................................. 7
July...................................................................... 8
Untitled.............................................................. 9
a bell................................................................. 10
a bell (cont.)......................................................... 12
Four grimm snapshots..................................... 13
Backstage.......................................................... 15
One-Way Journey by Man To Moon
Is Suggested...................................................... 17
thin poem......................................................... 19
About the author............................................. 20
introduction
The poems in this book were written across several places and

o
years. The only commonality between pieces is that they were

all written for grad school workshops. I can’t remember what the

assignments were, despite having the poems in front of me; not

sure if this is good or bad. I read Backstage at a bar in Brooklyn

in the fall of 2008, and again, much changed, at a writing

department event a few weeks ago. Relevant portents appeared

in the 2009 Naropa magazine (r)evolve; other than this, none

of the following poems has been previously published. What

else is vital to tell you? Dream #3 was an actual dream I had,

Backstage is also a true story. I’d like to thank Steve McMichael

for his kind help in designing this book; my poems have never

looked better.

– Erin M. Virgil
Relevant portents
Proceed in,
the Year of the Ox.

I ask Ganesh, who sits on a giant speaker,

the mouth of the house,
to bless the confusion he sees, ignore the transgressions. “It’s mostly innocent”,
I keep insisting, “the forgetfulness lifts.”

is this related
to my dream last night?
I found
a ratty pack of cards under a theater seat
opened the box and tried to get one out;
they were glued together, no faces up,
no clues there

so, I woke up and scrambled to honor the household gods:

Kali, mother, start it all again.
Buddha, beautiful elephant, your face is a little membrane. I can’t pass through
Ganesh, your mouse is made of steel & feathers. Is your broken tusk a
tunnel? We both write hidden letters
St. Anthony: I even lost your face

look down patchwork pantheon, are you awake?

Outside are winter’s words, visible invisibles

wind chimes work hard, sound off
wind from the north
tonight a new moon
Dream 3 #

Sitting next to a lost one,

usually hidden from me.
He was just as tall as
the statue he has been
and hair was often covering his face.
I was, typically, exposed he was watching
a loose pink and blue bathing suit still
waiting to dive into the high school pool I felt his eyes follow me in
wanting to hide my body, he had changed my
it, everything looked ugly now. head
All I had rehearsed, I forgot: hit
we only spoke a few words, the wall
polished white stones passed between cold hands, and
and then a whistle blew and I fell apart
rose and walked to the water’s edge blood crept out, down
where other young girls were swimming, were fish in front of my eyes
dove in a silent film run slow
down I sank quietly
down, a polished white stone.
past the end of the meter marks No one noticed.
The other fish swam over my open head
with my last look up
I
looked
for him but
saw only
spinning blood
a halo
para- July
normal
sonnet Saturday morning.

I get caught out of time

swallows are passing apostrophes

tomatoes escape their cages
and next door
they plant tiki torches
with the tags still on
His last life he was a paranormal and the cicadas are awake
investigator and now he’s haunted
halfway there and then some
by unsatisfied former clients, long I can’t account for January or March
their movie has been lost,
dead and gone to the other side where they’ve the dialogue unmemorable.

found he was usually wrong or lying. July is like a pair of old glasses:
slow down
In the present tense this man is just a look now

humble accountant who can’t understand

why his lamps fly at walls and sheets float off.

Untitled a bell
i.
the fat lady has it easy
she is what she is what she is.
the tattooed man rests calmly in his skin.
When we pare it down he knows how his story will end. his tattoos are not eternal.
let it lie and the wolf boy is content
look away chasing rats under the tilt o whirl
we run the risk and stealing popcorn from children
of the room exploding distracted by the miniature pony.
will it hold this much current? the strong man stands erect, complete. his mustache curls with integrity.
it already has
a hole where the money was only i am halved.
a shadow growing from the names we forget if you see me from the right side you will say,
Our bodies line up eye to eye “what a lovely woman”
we say “no, that was a long time ago” approach me from the left and i’m one of the guys.
and somewhere a pen rolls under a car seat straight towards me and see two separate pieces
a watch falls off a dresser half man half woman
a key is lost in a couch a fruitless coupling.
and part of your map two retreating halves, separate down to the bone,
and my map alive,
are rubbed out irreconcilable
maps we had before we met.
some ruined countries leave traces, pieces of rivers ii.
& when we pare it down
let it lie I wish I could go one day without thinking about having a baby and suicide, usually
look away in that order. Sitting in a tank of lukewarm water, watching people watching me.
the rivers rise It’s important to make eye contact or else they think I’m ashamed
to wear this costume! It’s just a costume, I can part my legs. I’m wearing three and
a half green bathing suits sewn together. They’re too tight and still look like bathing
suits, but the water is so cloudy you can’t see the seams. When I think about suicide
lately, it never happens in this tank, no matter how bad the night’s going.

a
iii.
a bell cont.
i am the larger half
i am the smaller half, the should-have-died side his knee
why did we hold on to each other in the beginning? gets worse
i will die alone every night
i am on the left
i am on the right v.
i love her
i hate her Sledgehammer
i abhor never drove a railroad spike
i ignore never broke through bricks
one liver has spent its whole working life
for two mouths in my giants’ hands
death will not swinging up, down,
do us part stop & look up, lean down.
sledgehammer hit this giant lever
iv. make this bell ring
I
am small,
the smallest by far
sitting on a tall man’s knee
to make my smallness smaller, more concentrated
the man’s name is horace
his face is long
but he seems to like me.
my lace shawl
is two lace ladies’ gloves
stitched together.
i roll
my own cigarettes
and horace lights
them eternally
patient.
Four grimm snapshots
I III
Crouched down here with the littliest birds For my dear stepdaughter
I watch them pick lentils from ashes: I ransack my labratory.
the good ones for the pot Red apple, be my canvas:
the bad ones for your crop I begin with this dead baby’s tooth,
I say it over and over, a prayer. toss in a fistful of mummy dust, drop of mercury,
Their tiny heads bob up, down the tailfeather from my good crow.
little black beaks peck against the hard hearth stones, make a clinking sound. Odds and ends from yellow and green pickling jars.
Why do they care I coat the apple with honey, because I’m not all bad.
if I go to the ball tonight Last I add a drop of my blood
and curtsy for the king? to seal us together
Maybe they’re just hungry. like mother and daughter.

II IV
My favorite blue ball When I pushed her into the oven
has rolled into the cage I thought she’d smell like melting sugar,
where they keep the wild man. like the dripping walls of her house.
His hair is a giant nest for sparrows No: a sickly old and foreign smell
his beard is made of black wires. burning flesh and dirty cloth, mud and hair.
He squeezes my ball with his giant right hand We heard her toothless screams for a little while
and stares at me through the rust caked bars. from his cage, my brother licked his lips.
His eyes are the color of a dead fish’s belly
and never blink.
Backstage
Long legs in fishnet tights Clouds of smoke hung high above,
under feathers, under sequins masked painted faces
sticky red lips exhale I saw no faces
in blue blind faith to believe they were there
cigarettes twitching fingers, i watch the smoke go up they were there, behind muted conversations;
the fishnet tights had black pointy heels
Wild colors are moving around me: for punctuation
gold beads in black gloves, stamp curse stamp
green skin suits and orange scarves,
the underside of a pink tutu, a Martian canopy. overhead voices came, and went,
Black pointé shoes knocking at the floor, bleeding down
I thought the floor would break through silver tinsel, red feathers
tap shoes clacked out crucial words
four years old I strained to hear and
clinging to my mother’s hand pushed deeper into my mother’s skirt.
she navigated the high school hallway,
labyrinthine backstage, On my back:
with caution butterfly wings

I watched and watched color trails on tile walls, red, like my little red ballet slippers
the rare light of red sequins tiptoeing through the carnival,
a blue gown brushed my face; the forest of mannequins in costumes
long white nails crept down
into my line of sight it took a long time
to scratch a shining white knee. to find the other butterflies
One-Way Journey
by Man To Moon
Is Suggested1

Two doctors suggest sending

a man on
a one way trip to the moon.
He will live there alone For the indeterminate years
circling the earth we will give him
until all the learned men have learned water, oxygen, food, medical supplies
how to bring him back scientific and recreational equipment.”
“Science and military advancement call for one man Someone asks, how long until he leaves?
to leave us. The elder doctor replies
Our rivals may have already sent men to the moon, “We can send him
and lost them. on a one way
There is also Mars and Venus to consider. trip to the moon
much sooner now than planned.”
Still we can’t bring him back
until we have built more machinery It was generally agreed upon, though never openly voiced,
may be months years the man would be remembered as a distant star
of dead end orbiting. as soon as his ship had left
The whole problem
would be whether he could survive
psychologically
and physically
on the bleak surface of the moon.

1 [title and quotes from the Schenectady Gazette, June 20, 1962]
thin poem
the lift
I lost and kept
looking for
left traces of itself
dim negatives
in coffee-table papers,
pathways in ashtrays,
dust profiling piano keys.
November’s half-moon
signals an end
to another
indecipherable pattern day.
Still, archetypes were reliable
four stars for aquarius
out of five
out of time
all day
and all
lost letters are gone.
Erin Virgil is a graduate student in Writing
This lift lasted
an hour even & Poetics at Naropa University, in Boulder,
a place of faceless calm
Colorado. After she graduates next fall, Erin
left traces I can’t
read or follow plans to tour North America in an ethanol
just look at powered school bus with her two cats, Hotspur
long
look away and Professor Fang. You can find more of her

work on her blog at: Raggedy Shotgun Ann.

R