Poetry By Dan Murphy

Paul Sableman CC




1986, September

                                                          Rather notice, 
                                                          mon cher, 
                                                          that the moon is     
                                                          tilted above 
                                                                      –To a Solitary Disciple, WCW

1986: instant coffee, seasick spin on Panasonic cassette player, bass speaker blown—the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr.; Captain Crunch, Where the Wild Things Are. Artifacts against this addiction. My diary reads: One bad haircut from celibacy, one paycheck from living at home.  Days with words, frenetic desire, languid purpose. Every human an obstacle or opportunity to plumb. If I put this foot forward I will progress. (And so a religion is born.) Hey Martin, the letter (excerpted): Madonna to Marx, I’ll include it all—Adorno agrees. What content does the form of our Madonna express in the realm of the super- structure? What virgin territories in post-colonial, postmodern world? The garage is fine—suffices. My ashrama, laboratory, dumping grounds. Backyard’s safe—I sleep, screen door open, two months now. Restaurant gig pays rent, food. I read and write for entertainment. Sober 9 months (a full term?!?) last Tuesday. Congratulations! Right? 
I’m O.K. The days pass by but the night presses down. You know what I mean? Joe is still in. He won’t write back. It’ll pass or not. Can’t control what I can’t control. Dig this: Dreamt last night I breathed fire in circus show. They gave me Vodka instead of gasoline. I held an acetylene torch and blew pinpoint lines of flame as tattoo artist. If it hurt it proved they were unworthy. Who felt no pain, were saved. I couldn’t wash out the taste on waking—over and over I rinsed my mouth and teeth. Wiping my tongue with a towel. Felt like I’d gargled with aspirin. That’s unusual: most nights I’m dreamless, wake empty. How’s your mother? I’ll write again. Write if you can, or dictate to her. Here’s something I’m working on. I know it’s pitiful bourgeois crap but read it anyway, motherfucker. Hey, only 2 more years of Ray-gun!--Mark


Untitled

Gibbous moon emerge, pockmarked
Fellow, a tinge of jaundice.
(Your stage makeup fails you in this light.)
5/8 full—5/8 devotion, 5/8 infatuation
But absence and loss all I see.

Butterfat, tallow—the rich disturbance
Of life. She loves me not, she loves me,
Recursion and self-similarity—we’ll go
Back to save one soul, start a new 
civilization—Fibonacci’s paradigm: 
21 or 34 chances of She Loves You--Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! 
1 in 2 chance to win. 
To lose inevitable.




​Dan Murphy has published two chapbooks, The Seasick Serenade, Sung Partial (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and The Book of False Rhyme (Finishing Line Press, 2013), with poems published in Field, Beloit Poetry Journal, Image, Spillway, Zyzzyva, Cortland Review, North American Review, and elsewhere, and with recent publications in 2026 in Epiphany and Eclectica Magazine. He won the American Academy of Poets prize in 2005, and was one of the winners of the George Floyd Poetry Prize with Los Angeles Press, in 2020.
 
Murphy completed his BA in English from University of California at Berkeley and received a MA in English (Creative Writing emphasis) from California State University at Northridge. He worked as a bilingual teacher and served as union representative in the Los Angeles Unified School District.