Rich Murphy


Rainbow End


In the democratic desert,
where the lesser evil drifts
when the wind storm howls,
the Bedouins walk until bones
can’t cast shadows.

Ownership shifts, sifts into mirage.
Watery selves bubble up from pores.
The sun and sand collude
to bake flesh loaves for vultures.

Green voices skirt the doom,
and tribal areas wait
for drumming fingers
to fill the streets without a hero.

The dream, to dilute fear
into solutions, to quench thirst
for scapegoats with dialogue,
to soak impulse with second nature,
perches, a pigeon, on tongue tips.




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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