Fault Lines
You talk like a waterfall. I’m lumbering
down rain. The plane of broken water toward
shame I do not feel. Your pain defines me.
Climbs down the fall to the splintered
pool I grab with both hands.
You blister my defeat with repetition.
You repeat my insignificance. I dissolve.
I hold my ears. I hold my own. Stones appear
as smattering blades of rain. Gainshares
plummet. No runnels here. I hear your flint
voice voicing trauma you will never hold.
It’s cold again from here. You catch a spear
and wield what wildness might have glowed ago.
Simmering with strain. Fault lines beneath the strain.
Enclosed
Enclosed, we outlive our closeness. Beyond
the perpendicular pronoun. Warm we,
second person plural, a better answer
to the restaurant host’s “Just one?” The
hungry body needs to lose itself,
without strangling dangling participial
others thirsty for speakeasy taunts, as if
proximity meant all one, Alwun House,
a performance space in our western village
bloated with population. In twos, shucking
the status of MVP, a threnody
before the spotlight on one deemed ideal
for the role of icon according to
the ministry of prey, overcast
with envy to carry forward an urgent,
inextinguishable senseless oneness.
Recidivist
I’m on my way to taint the glyphs on trees. Freeze frame light of day. Board the traipse-mobile and go away (I’m on my way). Cliffs splay clipboards at play. Way north of gerunding, God willing. Recidivist splay. Rebel against the gains on hilltops retrieved. A reprieve. Scope sequenced to fault the slow learn. Slow burn fallen (through). Who teaches you, the few. I wrap my head around the wrap around my head.
Trawling the score named evermore, free lit freeway, smell of hay
Underpainting
Braille hums
haptic heft, a fuse
lurking around
future romp. Pomp
and cirque-de-soleil.
Summer gardens
opaque with shine.
Toots Kinsky matte
finish. Surface gloss
gone tame. Outer
glass rough with
source code grains.
With / Draw / All
With.
Draw. All
morning.
Raw
mourning. A longing.
ensconced in
brother
broth once
fair-minded, now
un-
mended
sweat on brow.
Practiced
preach. Long-
sleeved feral.
skeet
shot blood
on window
missing
target by way
of cheap wheels.
Husbandry
Roller coast me close
to breeze viatical (remember
expectation. Bluebottle dit
dot (pairs sans need
(pared just enough
for early breath. Shaped
pear pearl lid plot
half
injurious day-
glow (run from
penury (slow
return to place-
based pain). Stain-
cropped (drum
plain page boy
buoys no sprite
Just spit
(split lip
Sheila E. Murphy. Appeared in Fortnightly Review, Poetry, Hanging Loose, others. Forthcoming: Escritoire (Lavender Ink). Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018).
Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy