Sheila E. Murphy


from October Sequence
 
4/
Thanks G for “meaningly” my glee
Spills over plush oats
In this white morning bowl 
As I collide with breath
Above the nest and beckon 
In good charm time warm
To reach uncut collateral
Let’s say free lurching this way 
On impulse to betray 
The ones deserving of betrayal
In silken chestnut cloisters
Near the wind beyond the window
Precious please be pretty now
And ride the damages
To safety at the pinhole hour
With depth avowed


5/
Keep upkeep lithe skin-deep 
Come-hither nurse yet wet
Behind the lobes approaching
Scrum fed parkway’s kismet
Gone to suds against the elbow 
Smuttering God help 
The dreamed z’s anymore disrobable 
Than scansion standard 
Issue pawnshop short short story
Drizzled onto pagelets winking
Slurry dram shop legal pique
The clean breeze nominates 
Syllabic feats new names announce 
The well-bred fingerings of classifieds 
To match high need versus 
Neanderthal meandering in ship shape 
Forest high beams waiting to stick
The prim routine by taut young
Gymnanzies 

 
6/
Tepid to the tap shoes weighing
Bandy-legged zero-sum grams
Achieve un-touch of midnight morning
Weedy as conformity to breast feed 
Syllables disguised as young bad moods
Upon the altar cloth against the sotto
Shades of Otto’s grades made cinders 
In the wheatfields grazed upon
By dandy lights about to break 
Into some butter stains along 
The chin line after yogic stances
Held against mimesis of eternity
Until one chime commands cessation
Cheated of a sugar feigning depth 
In forest wheeze the light spats 
Between branch and silhouettes
Of leaves and stern vibrato 

Sheila E. Murphy: in 2020, Luna Bisonte Prods released Golden Milk. Murphy's book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory (2018). Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). As an active collaborator, she has worked with Douglas Barbour on an extended poem called Continuations. Initially educated in instrumental and vocal music, Murphy is associated with music in poetry. She earns her living as an organizational consultant and researcher.

 
 

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