last dollar

The intricate ways of spending a last dollar.  Halfway to a coffee, 
plus change from under the car seat equals a whole coffee.  Add 
several coupons and a last dollar becomes a few cans of cat food, 
two packs of gum.  If you were a different sort, a last dollar could 
be exchanged for a ticket: to a ride, to a place, to a chance for 
more dollars.  But you like tangible exchanges.  This piece of 
brittle green paper for that concrete thing.  Can, cup, piece of 
ribbon from a fabric store.  Thin piece of shiny paper.  A crow in 
a human shape, that’s you.  Turn your last dollar into some fraction 
of a gallon of gas and no place to go: one way to pass the unemployed 
afternoon.  Or keep it to roll your last three cigarettes with, this 
is another possibility.  Lay it out on the coffee table and study 
the intricate patterns, overall boring design.  Why isn’t American 
currency flashy and colorful like Chinese money?  Even the practical 
euro has three or four shades of blue, red threads; U.S. bills are 
faded greens.  Dragging greenbacks.  In the end, there’s not enough 
joie de vivre this afternoon to use your last dollar as anything but 
a bookmark.






Erin Virgil is a writer and painter living in an RV in Colorado. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Naropa University, and keeps up a blog (mostly, movie reviews) at emvlovely.wordpress.com.  Her work has been published or is forthcoming from Wolverine Farm, Indigo Ink, Colorado Life Magazine, Open to Interpretation, and Fast Forward Press.