Erin is the 2013 recipient of a John Woods Scholarship from Prague Summer Program and the author of nine chapbooks, including Body of Water(winner of the 2007 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award),Inland Sea (winner of the 2009 Robin Becker Chapbook Prize), and Memento Mori and The Vanishing of Camille Claudel (both forthcoming in 2013). A former teaching fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, she has received awards and fellowships from Split Rock Arts Program, Lettre Sauvage, Augustana College, and the Academy of American Poets. She currently teaches English and Women’s & Gender Studies at Augustana College along the Mississippi River, where she co-coordinates the campus Safe Zone Program.
Pilgrimage
Gray-gauzy light, the edges manic & tired, & at
night, head tilted back, a welter of stars invading kindly.
The
dust-driven trail drives the hiker to query the miles stacked in her
boots—sylvan confessional, autumn’s ochre hum.
Pocket-knife, tin cup, ferro rod, afterimage of last night’s hurrah
still warm in her hands.
And
the wind nuzzles its maw like a filly at a gate.
Where
does what has left us go?
If
I make of my hands a temple—incense, votive, blocks of cool stone, the vocal
bow chanting makes of the air—who, then, will reach, unstumbling, for the
braided rope, coax the rusted metal to sing its tiny room?
Tall grass taken by snow, rain tumbling
coins from the sky’s torn black jeans, a wind that bays—I am willing to follow
it anywhere.
Of quietude, the body, in time, adjusts to the added weight.
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