"Back Talk" and "Trespass"

Back Talk

This was how I learned

Eternity

all foes gone

Just me here now

And free to vary

 

 


 

Trespass

It’s a long dream to keep the clouds

That they might trespass on blue light

Cool or lush against the skin

Perfumed so daylight kisses evening

Peaceably like a soft meal

*

Handprints on the inner door

She likes to think she’s home

*

Undreamt snowfall

Keeps sweet flowers

Dry to brush the walkway

*

He writes to say he hopes I’m smiling

Sometimes I do, sometimes

I fasten on a photograph

When he was smiling.

 

 

Sheila E. Murphy

Sheila E. Murphy. Poems have appeared in Poetry, Hanging Loose, Fortnightly Review, and numerous others. Most recent book: Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Received the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). 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). 

Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Wednesday, March 11, 2020 - 22:10