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Sheila E. Murphy :: Four poems


A New Routine

Resume vivace. Find the cup
To ripen space. Alleviate,
Revive. Untie the stitched
Warped to weakness.
 
Maybe anybody busy
Hurtling toward the unplanned
Finish line evaporates intact.
Who knows who cares?
 
Dominoes reputed to effect
Downturn may be rumors
Only skittled in a curve
Not named. Apply your name?
 
How do you want to be
Recalled, if at all?
For slumber, or no waves,
For thick vast summer sprawl?
 
 
 
Naivete
 
All of a sudden destination’s lost to destiny. What lived within a frame has fallen from the hasps perhaps imagined. He introduces a new name, the locus of adventure. Who is she what has she done why does she live? He has a story not yet made. I hear it for the first time if he speaks. An attractive nuisance shapes itself in view. There is nothing more to do but linger and admit the loss. His thought dialing new number after number.
Stretch not to reach, just stretch as though a fated reflex
 
 
Now That

Now that I have something
I have something to protect.

This unwoven world may own
moments in common, or may not.

How do we connect when we do not
resemble? How might we derive a lesson

from a lesson not yet learned?
The earning of a heart refashions

something of a brain, an engine particled

into invisible détente allowed in keeping.

As the moment freshens to another moment,
how will we remember what we thought?

And will it matter anymore? Will this point of thinking

translate to another place from which to start?



This Day
 
I
pray for
peace of mind
 
host nation speaks
volumes fluently
misunderstood
 
listen
to doves
be projected on
 
our grief shapely
as lust
heat
 
several
channels burst
open openly opining
 
shall we say
in syllables
detached
 
 
from
heatfelt heartland
heartily by process
 
of elimination past
the point
of
 
need
now leveling
to new lows
 
give a girl
a break
down
 
will
you pastor
speak some truth
 
the piano bench
I barely
dent
 
 
 
prompts
sitting up
straight (yeah, right)
 
the way you
steel-spined
mimic
 
john
wayne let’s
say or Clint
 
all these figures
of imagination
loitering
 
mid
mind locked
on fossil fuel
 
“patient denies verigo”
the room
spins
 
 
 
take
a number
sit and stew
 
wait for a
clear signal
raise
 
your
hand express
frustration or desire
 
until the general
dies no
chance
 
you
will advance
to the next
 
corresponding avenue of
removed fate
maybe
 
 
 
evidence
sprawls across
the naked eye
 
or sight unseen
particulars weigh
heavily
 
on
those who
admit the real
 
into their cortex
are we
they
 
 
 

Sheila E. Murphy is an American text and visual poet who has been writing and publishing actively since 1978. She is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. Green Integer Press. 2003. Murphy was awarded the Hay(na)ku Poetry Book Prize from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland) in 2017 for her book Reporting Live from You Know Where, scheduled for publication in 2018. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona




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about :: where is the river

where is the river :: a poetry experiment is a bi-monthly poetry journal open to a variety of aesthetics, forms and experiences, with a preference towards showcasing work by emerging writers. There is no single path, nor any single way. Founded in September 2017. Edited by Kiefer JD Logan.