For once I chomp at the bit then go. Show the neighborhood I've failed to say hello. Pearl clouds wield a silo north of what I think. By the way, do you know the fingering on flute for C above middle C? There was no internet when I first pondered that and waited to be told. A parallel bold shock of white gold embosses what is not a belt buckle. Huckleberry tart gone lovely near impending waltz. I let me out of my cage to which I am the only key holder. Imaginary impediments make be sounder than the flea in the jar staying put and waiting for instructions from the moron not imaginary yet. I'm ready to pounce on the unblistered face of earth including me.
Overcast
She had not for long been useless. Dark drapes held on hush-drapely. She watered tired plants. She flinched at the thought of customary neighbors. Then limped across the enclosure of a room apart from disagreement. There had been enormous sunshine then the stars went shut as though cowed by inferior clouds. All the as-ifs that made the room hurt around her shoulders. Many recollections of the moon. Shipshape ideas of pale to middling light to warm a nest. It was possible to see undusted tabletops and imagine shelves without their books. She looked not very long at the kettle and waited for it to bloom her morning. Wood paneling as though wealth and simple.
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), and 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)
Praise for Escritoire:
“Passion, velocity and intensity, compression, humor, and trust in her readers are qualities you’ll find in the remarkable poems collected in Escritoire.” —John Levy
