Five Poems by Sheila E. Murphy

 

Near the Underbelly of the Viaduct

 

There lived a man who slammed enclosure.

Clothed in shorn clear and dark plastic 

His lachrymose eyes peeked through gray

Wintery darkness the only proof 

He was still alert to the blend of himself 

And his surroundings seen only as a drive-

By flash as cars holding the attention of drivers

Whizzed past this clot of being that would not

Subside, noticed or unnoticed, no matter

What clock point on the wrists or showing

On the face of the phones of riders or 

Drivers alone roving within their near homes 

Unlike his own ad hoc shelter of open air. 

 

Brushback Pitch

 

Lustrous albeit bare-knuckled brevity 

Stalls in the tracks of aspirants 

Remiss in the slipshod meantime jovial

Come-to-confirmation bias 

Flourishing post-penury's odd-man-out

Putative dis-inclusion turned

Monstrous minus th/ought (all for the low 

Low price of relentlessly nodding)

The yield as if post-noodling proposition

A mere preposition a shelf of self-

Same promissory intonations whelped post-

Caveat nearing hearing a faculty 

Defending noxious nominative bakeoffs 

Of indefatigable diffidence 

 

The Moon Becomes a Parable

 

After Susan Stewart

 

However many homonyms cross their heart and hope

Bound a handful of prime numbers in their prime

Mudras in daylight fill my two side pockets

Meanwhile repartee smooths into the ear canal 

Slide ruling history with a fragment of pomp

 

Privacy my primary gift to you

However many homonyms cross their heart and hope

The handful of possessions need to be released 

Mudras in daylight fill my two side pockets

Thought capsizes some of the indifference

 

When I feel out of bounds my hands extend

Privacy my primary gift to you

A gift hidden away in the sleeves of the home

The handful of possessions need to be released

The moon becomes a parable 

 

Fraught with rear view mirrors I keep polished

When I feel out of bounds my hands extend

A tender offer severing informal chat

A gift hidden away in the sleeves of the home

Impromptu variations eclipse the theme

 

Errors of fact are thought to prompt music

Fraught with rear view mirrors I keep polished

Fractions destined to craft a little history

A tender offer severs informal chat

A child's game played on the painted circle on the floor

 

Subtraction enlists the lust for privacy

Errors of fact are thought to prompt music

We called our home the woods and each year waited for fall

Fractions destined to craft a little history

Chance operations meant leaves would be raked and burned

 

The yoga breathing teacher delights in lion's breath

Subtraction enlists the lust for privacy

I still feel the football band's bass drum tone in my stomach at night

We called our home the woods and each year waited for fall

Time to free the grass blades clean of dust

 

How I live now is to sip freshness from the dark

The yoga breathing teacher delights in lion's breath

How silent the night birds how quiescent thought conversation

I still feel the football band's bass drum tone in my stomach at night

You could smell leaves burning all the way to the football games

 

Extrasensory memory eclipses forethought dream

How I live now is to sip freshness from the dark

I do not prepare for sleep but allow it to arrive

How silent the night birds how quiescent thought conversation

Long nights stretch across a facsimile of witness protection

 

Whispering is not speaking truth to power

Extrasensory memory eclipses forethought dream

Miniature trellises keepsake thought

I do not prepare for sleep but allow it to arrive

I helpmeet mostly along the curved position of sleep

 

Chapters averse to completing the story 

Whispering is not speaking truth to power

A gift hidden away in the sleeves of the home

Miniature trellises keepsake thought

Fraught with rear view mirrors I keep polishing

 

Whose precious spine feeds my mind the comfort of skies

Chapters averse to completing the story

I lambent limn my thin lifetime 

A gift hidden away in the sleeves of the home

Storytelling weaves into common parlance

 

I lived my early life beneath oak trees whose acorns popped in the fire

Whose precious spine feeds my mind the comfort of skies

High above the dross of clouded earth

I lambent limn my thin lifetime

Night birds aspirate oncoming wind 

 

Whose precious spine feeds my mind the comfort of skies

I lived my early life beneath oak trees whose acorns popped in the fire

Cured brown fade-able gems in light

I lambent limn my thin lifetime

However many homonyms cross their heart and hope

Mudras in daylight fill my two side pockets

Janet Knows Her Latin Roots 

Janet knows her Latin roots.

She vows to place one foot before the other in devotion to what she learns.
to honor blended brain and heart.

Janet has forgotten the flute that was her vehicle for hearing God. She now
believes the arbitrary role an instrument plays. 

Adherence to the pathway, rediscovering the barely perceptible tai chi walk when Janet allows her feet to be the simplest instrument that carries her and allows a pause. 

Janet performs a deeper syntax indwelling in pre-green breath as spring comes on and foretells its complement autumn as leaves feather dim to a gray brown. She touches roots. Osmosis meets psychometry in Janet's touch.

For Janet, earth is not a collage. It bounds a deeper, richer silence florid with arpeggios and flounce. Janet usually sings near meadows where she can be assured of no audience. Janet vows to vow, avows and quietly, with resolve.
Janet tries to recollect what she has lost through meditation, then views a honeyed flower and faintly hears the buzzing there. 

Janet won't repeal what she repeats. Convenes some innumerable selves, each a dimension of the truer Janet. Pulse itself is riveting to Janet. Threads of sun spin beams of contagious joy. Wings and fur sprout around and beyond Janet. 

There is no aftermath of devotion. Janet designs the constant present in rooms that match her skin and arms and tactile hearing. Janet fashions a singing voice open three fingers wide that release an arrangement of the treble clef for the tribe including Janet. She tastes melodic paintings, she dances across a polished floor and equally meadows. Janet sees what wilderness found in orderly paintings harbor, and this enlivens Janet's mental picture of the self to which she already has arrived and will continue rediscovering. 

 

Exactly This Beautiful

 

When drunk they seem

To love me I look on

And believe they are

​Exactly this beautiful

 

In their hearts the past lives on

Beyond itself they call forth

All that mattered when they knew

I loved them perfectly innocently

 

Now at their party they point to pictures

True for them as history in polished

Measured frames close to a tonsure

Revealing the bare quiet space beneath

 

I still long for how they appear to feel

Despite the rigid frames of dark wood

Contrasting with the soft images in my heart

Safely apart from the geometry of love

Sheila E. Murphy. A Pushcart-nominated poet, recent of Murphy’s poems have appeared in Lana Turner, Posit, Poetry Bay, Poetose, among others. Murphy’s most recent book publications are I Want to Be Your Radio (Unlikely Books, 2025), Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025), Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). She won the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003) and the Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy_(poet)