dancing girl press, 2014
$7.00
Erin Virgil is a poet and illustrator who lives in an RV. She has an MFA from Naropa University and her work has been published by Fast Forward Press, Indigo Ink, and Wolverine Farm. Her first prose book, memory holes, was published by Monkey Puzzle Press in 2014. Fantastic Voyage to the Ordinary Planet is Erin's first poetry chapbook and she is honored to be published by dancing girl press.
[letter from an ordinary planet]
One out of a hundred holes turns into a tunnel, for instance a pair of glasses in a dark room. A chimney is a hole and a place where holes are made, where matter caves in.
Holes in car speakers: crowds of voices come through, the most disembodied traveling voices of all.
Sound holes, we all have them. Where our sounds come out is where the worms will go in.
Lousy friends can be holes. Throw some tainted memories in, a few dollar bills too.
A full moon is a hole in darkness. We struggle to see inside. People gave this hole a gender and a face: some people said it was a man, others said lady.
Memory holes: drop a line at your own risk.
A bad dream will make holes in your thoughts all the next day and that’s called a pattern. If you’re not careful it can turn into a memory hole.
The laundry mat is full of holes, especially portholes. Watching someone else’s costumes turn around and around, filling a machine. In the laundry mat where I’m writing this letter there are pierced holes in a beat-up couple’s heads, their faces as blank as ice cubes. And there’s a threatening hole in the wall next to my head which reveals some other planet, plaster and rust. Not so ordinary when paired with a room full of churning jeans and lingerie.
[Is this voyage too lazy? Or is it the vehicle that slows it down? The body that drags along is ill equipped for space travel.]