INSOMNIA CHRONICLES LIX

by Erin Murphy

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. When I hear contempt, I think contretemps. Instead of raging hatred, I see mild embarrassment, two girls showing up at prom in the same dress. Better yet, contra dance: two lines of partnerless dancers, a caller announcing moves to the beat of fiddles and mandolins. Years ago, a contra dancing club met Mondays in a local barn. Members brought potluck meals they kept warm under tea towels. Or so I imagine. I never went but was intrigued by the small ads in the weekly paper. All welcome, bring a dish. How did we find out about anything back then? No internet, no cell phones. If I were dropped in the middle of 1990, could I find my way home? The past is a foreign country, someone once said. Lately, so is this moment. During the pandemic, one house on our block had a Trust Dr. Fauci banner on the front porch. Across the street, neighbors planted a Fauci is a Liar lawn sign. My friend Joan says it’s everyone’s first time being a person. Most of us are personing the best we can. We try, try, stumble, try. Contra dancers weave in and out of other bodies, wipe brows with damp bandanas, grant grace for missed cues. Look each other in the eye.

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of sixteen books, most recently Swoon: New and Selected Poems (Grayson Books, 2026).

CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER VILLANELLE

by Erin Murphy

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Our first thought: the shots were staged,

erasing the day’s news and memes.

Flip the script, turn the page.

 

Distract from wars, inflation, climate change,

grift, dementia, les dossiers d’Epstein.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

 

Keep the masses entertained.

Let them eat vape and binge TV.

Flip the script, turn the page.

 

In late-stage cannibalism, feed rage

into the insatiable bigotry machine.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

 

What matters not is how it plays

in real life but on the screen.

Flip the script, turn the page.

 

Humans caged, history razed.

All the world’s a crime scene.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

Flip off the script, burn the page.

Erin Murphy's most recent books are Human Resources, Mother as Conjunction: Lyric Essays, and Fluent in Blue, winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award in Poetry. Swoon: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in June.

NOT ICE

by Erin Murphy

Homeland Security officials have urged disaster response staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to avoid using the word “ice” in public messaging about the massive winter storm barreling toward much of the United States... The concern is that the word could spark confusion or online mockery, given the ongoing controversy surrounding US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—also known as “ICE.” —CNN, January 24, 2026

It’s frozen water—not ice.

We have mouses not mice.

Say two times, not twice.

 

Your kid’s hair may be lousy

but it’s not crawling with lice.

Predators lure but do not entice.

 

Even the city in France

must change its spelling

to Niece instead of Nice

 

which looks like nice.

Casinos don’t use dice—

from now on, the plural

 

of die is dies. Take your

chances at the craps table,

on the sidewalk, in your

 

own car or home. Believe

what they say you saw

with your own eyes.

Erin Murphy’s latest books are Human Resources and Fluent in Blue, winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award in Poetry. 

ERASED

by Erin Murphy

​An erasure of “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” by Renée Nicole Good (Macklin).

The original poem follows "Erased."

 

Erin Murphy’s latest books are Human Resources and Fluent in Blue, winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award in Poetry.

*****

On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs

by Renée Nicole Macklin Good

i want back my rocking chairs,

solipsist sunsets,

& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.

 

i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores

(mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—

the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):

 

remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils,

& salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.

under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat

               ribosome

               endoplasmic—

               lactic acid

               stamen

 

at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—

 

i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to anymore, maybe my gut—

maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

 

it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.

can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom

 

               now i can’t believe—

               that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—

all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and where those two meet

and how often and how well

and what dies there.

A DAY IS NOT A DAY

by Erin Murphy

AI-generated image by imbox sanothai via Dreamstime

“House Republican leaders on [March 11, 2025] quietly moved to shield their members from having to vote on whether to end President Trump’s tariffs… essentially [declaring] the rest of the year one long day.” —The New York Times

A day is not a day.

A night is not a night.

A star is not a star.

Sunrise is not sunrise.

Rain is not rain.

A robin is not a robin.

A song is not a song.

Darkness is not dark.

 

Reality is not real

and neither is steam

from a whistling teakettle

or the smell of fresh basil

on your fingers

hours after you make pesto

or the calligraphy

of hoof prints in virgin snow

or the neon cotton candy

of northern lights

in Zion National Park.

 

Hunger is not hunger.

A lie is not a lie.

A gun is not a gun.

Fear is not fear.

A deported neighbor

was never here at all,

never taught your son

to dribble a fútbol

in the alley between

your homes.

 

Silence is not silence.

 

A day is not a day.

A year is not a year.

A lifetime is not a life.

 

A kiss is just a kiss,

Dooley Wilson sang

in Casablanca.

But a kiss is not a kiss.

It didn’t lead to love

or lust, not even for

your parents which means,

of course, you don’t exist.

You could tell your analyst

but your analyst is not

an analyst. And no matter

what he says, a cigar

is not a cigar.

 

A poem is not a poem.

Ce n'est pas un poème.

A rose is not a rose is not

a rose is not a rose. We are

not who we think we are.

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry is Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review.

INSOMNIA CHRONICLES XXVII

by Erin Murphy

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. I had to go to the laundromat last week because my washing machine was broken. Just a sock stuck in the drum, an easy fix. The repair guy said Whatever you do, don’t get rid of this beast—they don’t make ’em like this anymore. It’s 43 years old, came with the house. Now that I said this, it will surely die for good tomorrow. I met one of my best friends in a laundromat. Hadley, Massachusetts, summer before grad school. We got to chatting, and I said, Hey, I found a secret swimming hole. Wanna go? So we rode bikes through a farm field to a patch of sand on the Connecticut River. Back then laundromats were my only option. A pricier place in Mount Holyoke was also a bar. It had a clever name, like Suds & Duds or Wash & Slosh. Another in Amherst had a game room, so you could shoot pool or play pinball. I prefer a no-frills retro laundromat where strangers sit on plastic bucket chairs and watch the random choreography of shirts and pants. The suspended time when magic happens. Or did before cell phones. The repair guy says the key to my washer’s longevity is the center agitator. The new ones have electronic sensors that trigger error codes. Agitator. We need all the agitators we can get right now. But maybe when there’s too much to protest, we end up protesting nothing at all. Like that study that found people prefer a handful of ice cream flavors instead of dozens. Choices can be paralyzing. On inauguration day, he canceled lower prescription drug prices and birthright citizenship, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and declared there are only two genders. And that was just the warmup. Backpfeifengesicht is German for a face that needs to be punched. I just learned eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher: an egg shell cracker. It literally means an egg shell pre-determined breaking point causer. Germans do love the compound words. The compoundest—compoundiest!—of words. What’s the word for Please let us resist fascism while maintaining our sanity for the next four years? Please hold on, dear old washer. Please hold on, fellow agitators. We can’t let the one with the face that needs to be punched be the breaking point causer.

Editor's Note: This poem is a companion poem to “Insomnia Chronicles XXVI” published Sunday in Rattle. Erin explains, "These ‘Insomnia Chronicles’ are part of a series of poems dramatizing the associative connections sparked by sleeplessness. I imagine there will be plenty of insomnia for the next four years."

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry is Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

CONVICTION IN XXXIV MOVEMENTS

by Erin Murphy

Altoona, Pennsylvania—May 30, 2024

 

I.

We are sitting in a tavern by the railroad tracks when the verdict is announced.

 

II.

A wave of gasps ushers in a hush as patrons scurry to check their cellphones.

 

III.

Like when a hawk swoops through a copse of trees and all breeds of birds chirp warnings, then fall silent.

 

IV.

Overheard: I’ll bet all the jurors were Democrats.

 

V.

In our town, 2020 election signs are still staked in lawns like tombstones.

 

VI.

When we moved here, people asked Whose house did you buy? Surely they knew the previous owners, went to church with their parents, played football with their brother or cousin.

 

VII.

Overheard: Hot damn! He’ll raise even more money now!

 

VIII.

Here, even the rain moves slowly. Some days it’s pouring in our front yard and dry in the back.

 

IX.

A few evenings ago, two women with clipboards came door-to-door encouraging registered Republicans to vote. Wrong house, I said and urged them to Take the rest of the night off—better yet, the rest of the year.

 

X.

Overheard: He can just pardon himself.

 

XI.

Overheard: I don’t think he can pardon himself for a state crime.

 

XII.

Overheard: When he’s re-elected, he’ll change the law so he can pardon anyone he wants.

 

XIII.

Spitting distance from this bar in 1855, the first spark of the Civil War when two men leapt from a moving train: runaway slave Jacob Green and slavecatcher James Parsons.

 

XIV.

Overheard: He’ll send ’em all back to where they came from.

 

XV.

Overheard: Do not pass go, do not collect $200!

 

XVI.

Overheard: More like $200 million—that’s how much they’re stealing from us.

 

XVII.

Overheard: laughter.

 

XVIII.

Townsfolk confronted Parsons, demanding he prove Green wasn’t a free black, and in the scuffle, Green was able to flee. Parsons was charged with kidnapping, infuriating the South.

 

XIX.

Mason Dixon Line.

 

XX.

Blood line.

 

XXI.

Toe the line.

 

XXII.

Cross the line.

 

XXIII.

Line one’s pockets.

 

XXIV.

Bottom line.

 

XXV.

Flatline.

 

XXVI.

New York Herald headline, Jan. 31, 1856: “Threatened Civil War Between Virginia and Pennsylvania.”

 

XXVII.

From the Herald article: The common courtesies of life, good-neighborhood…should have been sufficient to induce the State of Pennsylvania to aid the people of Virginia to enforce the rights of her citizens to such property.

 

XXVIII.

Earlier this spring, a local middle school cut “Lift Every Voice and Sing” from its choral program after parents complained that the song was “divisive.”

 

XXIX.

Let our rejoicing rise/

 

XXX.

High as the list’ning skies

 

XXXI.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us/

 

XXXII.

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us

 

XXXIII.

Overheard: That judge better have a good bodyguard.

 

XXXIV.

And yet. Last month we landed in L.A. during the solar eclipse. Under the baggage claim atrium, I pulled out the sleeve of eclipse glasses I’d packed just in case. I looked up. There it was: what Wordsworth called something night and day between. Is there a word for the urge I felt to share it with all my fellow travelers? As weary passengers came down the escalator, I offered them glasses, summoning the word sun in every language I knew: sol, soleil, sonne. Some hung back skeptically as others eagerly pressed the dark lenses to their eyes. Flight attendants and pilots from Russia, Korea, Poland, Japan, Tahiti. A man with a handmade ukulele. A maintenance worker with a walkie-talkie. Parents, children, young adults who ran to retrieve their grandparents in wheelchairs. Tio, you have to see this! one teen told her uncle. A boy said Mommy, Mommy—the moon is like Pac-Man taking a bite out of the sun! Even a few skeptical passengers shyly came around. So many ohhhhs. So many smiles. So many faces tilted toward the same sky.

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry, Fluent in Blue, was published by Grayson Books in April 2024. She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

AFTERMATH

by Erin Murphy

"Children Under the Rubble" is a drawing by Mohammad Hayssam Kattaa.

“After natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and explosions, victims may survive in voids that are formed naturally in collapsed structures.” —Science Direct 

 

 

First, look for voids: 

bathtubs, stairwells, ribcages 

 

of infant cribs, the clumsy  

geometry of cantilevers and lean-tos  

 

from collapsed roofs, gaps  

beneath desks where small bodies 

 

just yesterday learned  

to add and subtract. 

 

Next, make your own voids: 

slide flat bags between rubble 

 

to inflate makeshift rooms  

of dusty birthday balloons.  

 

Finally, chisel dates in your  

mind: one week, one month,  

 

one year since you packed  

a lunch satchel and walked  

 

your only child to school.  

This is when the void finds you.  

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry Human Resources is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

MORTALITY EVENT

by Erin Murphy

Scientists Still Searching for the Pathogen Behind the East's Songbird Epidemic: In a new report, experts ruled out a range of causes, but they still recommend taking down feeders until the source of the disease is identified. —Audubon, July 8, 2021. Photo: A young Blue Jay admitted to the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Virginia with an unknown illness. Credit: Blue Ridge Wildlife Center via Audubon.

Songbirds stumble,  

crusty eyes gunked shut  

with conjunctivitis.  

 

Out of an abundance  

of caution, we remove  

feeders where they cluster  

 

like us to cluck about  

the latest scuttlebutt.  

Hands gloved, we dump  

 

the double-bagged dead,  

muttering that it’s redundant.  

We who have too much  

 

do not fund hungry children  

but grumble when unable  

to fuss over cardinals  

 

in lush gardens. We suffer  

from an abundance  

of abundance. 

Erin Murphy’s latest book, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diode, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, The Normal School Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review and Professor of English at Penn State Altoona.

APERTURE

by Erin Murphy

Embed from Getty Images

November 2020  

 

The cloud bank is a mountain— 

no, a continent—in the gun metal                               

 

sky and beneath it a cavalry  

of trees, mostly oak, limbs rhyming  

 

in Vs. Look closer to see the anarchy  

of leaves—some refusing                                

 

to surrender even after three nights  

of frost. What will it take? 

 

Remember the film in which  

the boys were cloned from evil DNA. 

 

Remember half your neighbors 

voted for—and from—hate. 

 

Who has won? Who has lost? 

Zoom in to the tip of a twig  

 

where a caterpillar—backlit  

by sunlight—stakes its claim,  

 

chrysalis of history spooled tight  

as a movie plot. Inside: maybe  

 

a monarch. Maybe a tiger 

moth. 

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, Field, Southern Humanities Review, Glass, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review.