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Sheila Murphy

Football

Helmets gleam to match the golden dome.
I am a child, drums sound
through our home walls.

In jacket weather, breath shows.
Walk |walk | walk | walk
through dark oak leaves.

Stored sleep meant to heal the future
holds the scent of smoke
beyond the city code that interferes.

From the desert of adulthood,
I watch this history revive
the vivid truth of present tense:

". . . eight minutes to go in the first half,
both tight ends on the right side . . .
You just continue to run your offense."

Live the call, arrive
in the statistical foreground
of a life, this fray, this stress test.



Finadinny Sauce

Humidity relapses into rain.
A wall of glass
shows muted sea light and cloud
lasts the afternoon.

Wrinkles relax out of my clothes.
I walk the lobby through connections
by machines on speaking terms
with points across bodies of water.

O venture toward clear spice lifts the taste
of food amid a simplified digestion.
Soft as semaphore, I think into
shared minds already loved,

who welcome me into a life
apart from shame in being small,
that half chance of survival,
presumed fictitious coastline.



Need

Watching philodendron's
independent limber, to be translated
in the evening hours.

Infinity resists its status
as a definition.
Addition vexes

those who see
what won't compute,
yet struggle to opine

on what is possible.
What is possible stays
equally impossible.

Each feat owns context,
a confluence, an audience
who waited overnight

to earn a pair
of tickets. Nature,
always in the way.



Pitch

Narration singles out
the status of dimwitted
off-key song.

A foundation of bass tones
glamourize specific
notes to match

a row of other ones.
A mother will invest
her calculus in fluency

within the soul of
any favored child, whose face
finds a specific distance

between this and other
tones. She may connect
the child to

other ones,
hinge on hinge, until
new mastery translates

to a sustained rest
lasting measure
after measure into darkness.



Repertoire

He claims to have botched
relationship upon relationship,
given opportunities
to end what will not end
itself.

She reasons with her alter
egomaniacal allegations,
inconsolably chants
evidence, as if
to patch a gulf.

They overreach their
solo choices as though in favor
of a separation angst
in which they each invest
apart from the commingling

they signed up to have,
to hold, to show, to prompt
in others watching,
hearing the war continue
to break out, as if freely.



Companion Peace

Thirty-five years takes just a moment to occur
and last. Being is a proclamation
that knowing implies valuing.
The cycle repeats itself.

Chaperones leave the premises,
relieved of their supposed role.
Resistance might be lowered in a pinch.
The cinch that bliss becomes,

arrives and holds sway over
instability recast as tense.
The white tree bends, leaves shake
their swift percussion, motioning

to bird tunes,
improvised, allowing
selves to make adjustments
to the center of the world.



Photography as Innocence

From my annual review:
"She is a non-controversial
member of my staff."

Tincture of mock orange infuses
one of the rooms
I live in.

Infrequently I picture him,
at the wheel, our night drive
along a Texas mountain.

Relationship is infinite,
when held apart from
present tense.

In the lobby of the prominent hotel
at noon break, the sign reads,
"All areas, under video surveillance."

So it is,
this life, a distance from
my inner life, the real one.



October Melody

Easy leaves and feathers
change with sky's
deciduous complicity.

Already, fathoming is punctual,
and fathers push small wheels
through crackling leaves.

Clock punctuates experience,
perhaps. Wristband
averts attention from the sign.

Capstone in the foreground
with a wide clean square
to frame the top,

as if face
comprised the sole
place to look.

Living by integers depreciates
unspoken sheafs of time,
the shavings, tithed.



Commemorandum

Yesterday, some of you noted
not a word from me. Thus, broken
sentences, with blanks for you.
Complete at leisure.

Crispness chastens maybe
every node, the diamond
in a flow chart. Watch yourself
neglect to watch what you are doing.

Surrender to the dry creek bed,
Anymore,
chalk on sidewalks holds
apart from wind erasure.

Semantics leaning toward
a white dishtowel waved to signal
all farm hands to rise from fields,
for soup and bread.




Sheila E. Murphy's most recent books include Continuations 2 (with Douglas Barbour) from the University of Alberta Press (2012) and American Ghazals (Otoliths Press, 2012). Her home is in Phoenix, Arizona, where she is Principal of Executive Advisement, LLC, a consulting firm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy


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