Sheila E. Murphy
Sheila E. Murphy. Poems have appeared in Poetry, Hanging Loose, Fortnightly Review, and numerous others. Most recent book: Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Received the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy's book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland).
Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy.
Remember no one's watching
everyone at once.
All this past and present is yours
if you do without
saying you are here
I want to dazzle off to a repetitive indulgence that transforms particulates into a wave of luster that defines who we will be.
I no longer hear that silvery soprano tone protecting me.
The woods, deep darkly, overcome a sheer blue sky, the color of your eyesight.
How can this impeccable quiet answer me?
A whole pure run of notes shows I have practiced imprecisely.
He writes to say he hopes I’m smiling
Sometimes I do, sometimes
I fasten on a photograph
When he was smiling.
The 5 was much easier to write
The ampersand, less so
With nothing to wave your hand over
As if virtual nature quite interior
Overlaps
How is it possible the sky
Can shine across the river
Anymore, the heart beat
Purely as the distance from a grave?
I was picturing the perfect hammock as an antidote to the mercurial endowment of the speaker’s eyes that skittered toward targets of greed. I saw firm feeling held between strong trees.
without relinquishing hope
even a sliver that defies
dark sky guarding
person from poisonous
There is no such thing as weather. On the off-chance that it rains, I will remember the indelible mark upon a winter pond where we would skate to music in our heads. The lamp of God was healing to a water deeper than some misplaced months.
