She Speaks

She speaks porously
She speaks the color violet
She speaks chords
She speaks crisp tines

Apportioned last place calms
The leafage viaduct
Slim fine fields
Whatever grows just grows

Not one of information
One of will
One of us
Not one of us

In earnest
Patches street signs
Comfort keeps hope
From being caught

 

She Wants to Be

She wants to be
to him a center
she would like to be
his world only
he is looking still
away is otherwise
engaged meanwhile she
wants to occur to him
within a life
that would confide
in what he would believe
unto himself
as independently as water
forming streams

 

Eyesight Pencils

Eyesight pencils me in
To the quintupled permaflex
Of contraband spare reason
On the cob thought apprehended
In possession of the document
Halfway home to bedrest
Once or twice apart from scenery
You would prefer to trim from
The already amended budget distant
From fact on tablets rained on
And in view of markets left to dry
Where no one can see them
Already partaking of the grain and
Wingspan's wholly-owned subsidiary
Downtime when the lenders turn
To borrowers being half themselves
The other half apart from
Circumspection where the water's fine
To middle-scented lariats apart from
Metronomes and flecks in check
While being doubted in first person

 

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Sheila E. Murphy's book manuscript Letters to Unfinished J. was selected in this year's open poetry competition sponsored by Sun & Moon Press, and will be published by Sun & Moon. Dennis Phillips was the judge. Falling in Love Falling in Love With You Syntax: Selected and New Poems has just been released by Potes & Poets Press. Recent works include A Clove of Gender (Stride Press, 1995). Murphy's work has been widely anthologized, most recently in Fever Dreams: Contemp orary Arizona Poetry (The University of Arizona Press, 1997) and The Gertrude Stein Awards in Contemporary Poetry (Sun & Moon Press, 1994, 1995). The Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series recently brought out an autobiography of Sheila E. Murphy, including photographs of Murphy with family and friends.

Sheila Murphy co-founded with Beverly Carver and continues to coordinate the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series, now in its eleventh season. Murphy is President of the management consulting firm Sheila Murphy Associates. Since 1976, she has made Phoenix, Arizona, her home.

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