Sheila E. Murphy


Why I Love Introverts
 
They insist upon a distance that allows us both to breathe.
They listen without turning sour.
They are so plural there is room for me.
They resist the urge to interrupt this program.
They may or may not speak.
They look good in clothes and out of clothes.
They arm wrestle indifference without showing their hand.
They play an instrument that need not be played.
They refrain from joining a religious order without thought.
They pray the offertory anyway.
They take walks in the common gardens and become part of the scenery.
They rehearse being unnoticed.
They readily afford a natural poverty.
They effortlessly hold my hand from Mars.

 

Performance Is Conceit

I bobble see-through froth
to wear to someone's 
bed lines, give me chemistry
or give me breadth, the seeming
seams all windowy a drive-
in porch of raconteur 
to wit the seasonal restraint
why don't we just 
lie here and stain the earth 
against our better flesh 
and never drown in what 
we have not deemed
against our better
justice to be dramatized
and rained upon as skeletal 
redress forms bake sales 
of our ballast and relents 


 
Scheduled

I am sure you don't want to hear this. 
Tomorrow he is coming by to take the bed.
I don't blame you for being speechless.
This has been brewing a long time.
I didn't say anything on purpose.
You know that.
Sometimes things just have to come out in the open.
I don't expect you to do anything.
I am a bit surprised myself.
Ten o'clock, he said. 
That's all I know.

Sheila E. Murphy is an American poet who has been writing and publishing actively since 1978. Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Her most recent book is Golden Milk (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020). Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Also in 2018, Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory.

 
 

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