Sheila Murphy - the-hold.com/june 2004

sheila murphy

comma

sustenance joint tenancy tenacious over-
lay impactful justice
joust upon terrain
the firma overdone right here John H.
your flourish
any time the easement's good remain
retain deplane the vehicle
you've bought on credit take five
the indifference is overwrought response
the spondees have us typified
it's nearly time
to cool the breast plate
walk the altar
see the shade from your own luster
cabin fever makes you want to strut
the mud hut makes you want to
dive into the wooly lake
the out-take
the eviscerated gemline of false trees
maybe the art inside the clinic is authentic
what else might be so you can
toucan look when you go there
all during tests you can imagine and invite selves not
yet blessed to come and join
epoxy in the nest term limits
happenstance that you should still be here
remember launch
recall the level play
the livelong day the impulse milk
to draw from and expected itemized enhancements
made up on the off-chance
maiden voyage is the soul
of earned respect
experience not always
conscious innocence

sencha

pulse of
the hermit monk
sides here.
in-
spires
hill thought.
reels of
moments stilled.
the part of
softer trills
than reeds
grown first
thing
singular. now
warm to-
ward surrender.

Vibrato by Half

you have let go
everything I have
acquired apart from
chimes. now

the mockingbird partitions
nothing. the improvised
fence made of middlewood
contains a purpose. the fraction

left to earth allows sonority
to dwindle from a bathed
intolerance. more loons than
beads upon my abacus

convey specific song. no more
closing up the distance
by a stroke. there are yet windows
to invent. distractions to repair.

if carafe

breathe the thimble-silver of a new world
shirk each prior posse of forgiven souls
seam a resurrected clarity through which
wilderness is viewed as if diurnal motion

repair binary lumens while they weigh another number
pore over a text
reform the light across each document
whose white is this white

look into this interfering wave
regarded fractional as respite
when the wings ensimple vestige after cloak
a tall father laced with contraindications falters

limber up your pale Corvair
address these operations with your whole
expression and support by fingering
the C above middle C played on a common flute

Sheila's new ebook:
pressure on the spine her spine your spine my spine
BlazeVOX Publications

Sheila E. Murphy's book manuscript Letters to Unfinished J. was selected in this year's open poetry competition sponsored by Sun & Moon Press, and will be published by Sun & Moon. Dennis Phillips was the judge. Falling in Love Falling in Love With You Syntax: Selected and New Poems has just been released by Potes & Poets Press. Recent works include A Clove of Gender (Stride Press, 1995). Murphy's work has been widely anthologized, most recently in Fever Dreams: Contemp orary Arizona Poetry (The University of Arizona Press, 1997) and The Gertrude Stein Awards in Contemporary Poetry (Sun & Moon Press, 1994, 1995). The Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series recently brought out an autobiography of Sheila E. Murphy, including photographs of Murphy with family and friends.

Sheila Murphy co-founded with Beverly Carver and continues to coordinate the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series, now in its eleventh season. Murphy is President of the management consulting firm Sheila Murphy Associates. Since 1976, she has made Phoenix, Arizona, her home.

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