Girlhood, 1996

Teenage girls try to conjure
the dead by holding hands,

and hurling swear words
to a dark sky. One time a girl

pulled the hair out
of my head and spit at my feet

three times. We knew everything
was magic and poison

at the sleepover, my hand placed
in boiling water. I fell

asleep first, my bra filled
with ice-cold milk. We

listened her sing:
to bring you my love,

just before I fell,
and I saw the other girls

holding mason jars filled with flies,
black beacons—a message

like when you look
closely at a still life painting.

Erin Carlyle is a poet and cat enthusiast whose roots are in the American South. Her poetry often explores the connections between poverty, place, and girlhood, and can be found in journals such as New South, Tupelo Quarterly, Bateau Press, and Prairie Schooner. Her Chapbook You Spit Hills and My Body was published on Dancing Girl Press in 2015, and Her debut full-length collection, Magnolia Canopy Otherworld, won the annual Driftwood Press Poetry Manuscript Contest and was published in December of 2020.