Rich Murphy


Constitutional Crisis


The exception rules introduce
by impressing a voting booth patina
upon all government buildings.
Stencil application persuades also.

The code book makes way for genocide,
slavery, The Fat Man, the corporate fix:
Top-down crews throughout the landscape
shoot up. Plus other needs for freedom.
Wee, the forced tour preambles about
and founders upon founders.
Framed, the constituent centuries later pleads
for the ability to earn a place to live.

Seven articles with subjects and a verb
that make duty and ambling so exceptional
other country miles drool with envy.

The bill for rights comes due soon;
Who prepares to pay the price,
including taxes: 27 in Roman currency?
The exception again rules to prove.




Rich Murphy’s poetry collections have won two national book awards: Gival Press Poetry Prize 2008 for Voyeur and in 2013 the Press Americana Poetry Prize for Americana. Asylum Seeker is the third in a trilogy out now (2018). The first collection in the trilogy was Americana. Body Politic, the second, was published by Prolific Press in January 2017. Murphy’s first book The Apple in the Monkey Tree was published in 2007 by Codhill Press. Chapbooks include Great Grandfather (Pudding House Press), Family Secret (Finishing Line Press), Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Books), Phoems for Mobile Vices (BlazeVox) and Paideia (Aldrich Press).
 
 
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