Poetry by Sheila E. Murphy

               ​Martin Cathrae CC



From October Sequence


15/
She’s still 
Wise today she is
Alert I ask a few things
And the answer is
Profound I have to sift
To sort and scatter
What to learn from what
She says I know there’s no
Disaster plan who needs 
The worst a singing feeling
Sinks into the comfortable
Couch I need a conch to hear
What is beneath the language
Offer me a path and I will
Substitute the faculty 
Of sitting where I am
To learn from her or other
Where what is becomes removed 
From habit systems 
In the nearby dark





18/
Don’t warn me about
Brittlebush the fragrance
Hurts don’t let the ocotillo
Change your magnet heart
Be wild with me awhile
I have been here am not
From here what difference
We are not alike let us ride bikes
Let’s censure predators
Who reproduce like weeds
Let’s not be who they 
Show themselves to be
As neighbors shrill their way
Through walls I do not
Want to hear I like a chilly
Metronome prefer host cities
To be hospitable and softly
Far away that I may learn
Myself and you and season 
My way forward to familiar 
Moments fretted with 
Untended melody ​



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. 
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