Sheila E. Murphy



Condonation

He performs what he
performed and will
perform. And shows me
variations on

the theme to be
his legacy. I recognize
the hiss of disappointment
when the instruments

malfunction. Malfeasance,
though, remains
unlikely. The instruments
remain unwieldy. The hands

employing what
keys do, defer to keys
and channeled breath
to lubricate and fabricate true north.


Quaint Curio

She talks about her latest
project, as though
I might aspire
to same or similar,

as though informing
a young facsimile
of self what heights are
possible, if not likely.

I fail to glaze over
during this recital.
I lavish sweet perfume
of my mentality

concerning a CV as plush
as a new feather bed
on which I lie, repeating
what will not be rinsed away.


A Frayed Timeframe

Nocturnal obvious fringe birds
line the gaps in hearing,
while I read a narrator
I learn to enjoy.

Which of us sparks
unfettered fire? The word
"inadvertent" simulates
another word that I forget.

I have forgotten innuendo,
a word my mother used to
chalk. We offered her so many
opportunities, op cit

in primacy-recency conversations,
disguised as dialogic. We still
norm our way to peace
time(s) three and linger.


Next Door

What little she
had, she gave,
she did not
count what left

her hands invisibly,
instead, the sky
showed its quiet
self, she heard

other than sound,
the lone moon
and the branches
in between it

and her eyesight,
stillness. Not doing
or even thinking.
Being, simply being.


Sense

Having curtailed more than
you have contributed, I feed
and clothe the spirit
that I know is there,

somewhere in the vicinity
of breath, I feel released
close to the infestation
of foreign and near

objects, substances, routines,
shuttled from your assumed
world weariness to my
certain practiced innocence,

as though swathed
in novelty accompanying
birth, beyond, yet sinking
into terra firma and its plates.

Michelle Greenblatt & Sheila E. Murphy

 
 
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