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Competing

By Erin Kirsh
After work or maybe it’d be better
to call it a gig, we peel heels
off blisters, throw pretty pinching pumps
into balding backpacks and head
for home.

The bus from North Mountain Highway
back to the city smells
like moldering bananas and something less
distinct, something hungrier.
This bus of hopefuls returning from Set
(where we sat packed like cave bats
into an auditorium playing parents
though most of us feel mostly like children)
is a clubhouse of tired
satisfaction, of smug
commiseration, of close enough,
of some people never do this, don’t even
know, some people never take even this
thin-as-shadow chance. We exist

heavier here than we do on camera
where we were sucked in
like models’ cheeks and wary breath
the waft of us weighty on this raft
through the traffic, the breeze
a soft whisper through the windows
all of us competing
for that fresh draft of life.


Career Event Coordinator

By Erin Kirsh
The arrangements are made, blossoms
and moss top tables in glass vases. I lay

out lists on clipboards: names of accomplished
monied people who may yet attend

fashionably late, people of means,
leisure, and time. Behind me

there’s applause in the theatre.
I don’t know who is currently speaking,

don’t have the programme I copied page
by stubborn page, but the response

is mannerly and well-behaved.
Applause belongs with dignity 

like new shoes belong with dog shit.
The night I saw Zac Jackson speak

I clapped until my palms stung, until I learned
all the bones in my hands. That night

nobody made centerpieces and no one hired
a band, the sound girl was drinking

from a margarine tub. I dove tongue first
into pitchers, stout then sangria loosening

my limbs like oilcan! and afterwards
there was dancing. I lost

consciousness on a bed of cocaine in a stall
rife with Sharpied ennui, one purist used

Wite-Out to pass on their message,
capitalism sucks.  A clever respondent: YOU suck!!!

and I came to in the Pacific, pants crumpled
on the shore, purse probably somewhere.

Today I command caterers for an atrium reception,
smooth black tablecloths, soothe wrinkles flat

with unstinging palms. In the theatre
they clap again, a short sound, like surf

rolling up. When is the last time I skinny-dipped,
let salt nibble shaved legs cold and prickling

in the tide? How long since I have been moved
to applause, or at all?

Beacon

By Erin Kirsh
Between beers stolen from strangers, breaking nug
over a sheet of paper on the coffee table
Greg tells me I am the only person
he knows who is doing what they want in life. I’m not
sure what to say my speech
eats itself my wallet vomits laughter
into the pockets of jeans I’ve had
since high school that fit, kind of, still
give me muffin top. The premature crows’
feet are a few years old, too, will blow out
fourth birthday candles in June. The perfume
of good green releases and I mellow, brain
purrs like a cat who’s been left
well enough alone. On the balcony, overlooking Yonge
down to the tower, the bong bubbles beats above
the hip hop. He is looking at me with admiration maybe
envy. He is proud that one of us is “making it,”
is brave, this is his perception and I don’t
know if it’s kinder to dispel it or say thank you.
A red-eyed man I must have known at one point
comes in off the balcony shedding snow. It twinkles
in his hair like crystals, like he’s put them there for Burning
Man. Greg takes the glassware I think
of telling him that if I were really
doing what I wanted in life, I’d be doing this, here, forever
all this wasteful and disappointing nothing, an inner
tube in a lazy river running the quiet course
until my alleged accomplishments are behind me, just lights
blinking in the chlorine.


Erin Kirsh is a writer, performer, and funnyman living in Vancouver. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in The Malahat Review, EVENT, Arc Poetry Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, subTerrain, Geist,  QWERTY and more. In her spare time, she complains about the existence of cinnamon raisin bagels. Visit her at www.erinkirsh.com or follow her @kirshwords.
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