WORD/ FOR WORD: Volume One
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Sheila Murphy

 

Self Similarity

The Julia set conforms to inner Julia I would have to guess
And de rigueur endorsements fail to stymie
Onlookers with broccoli in their teeth
Rejoicing at the wit of inlaid selves, comprende?

Forecasts swill around the house
Like witness easily divided into twelve,
New signatories like the first one cradled,
The impoverished blue rich insisted on pronouncing
"Crested Butte" "Cresta Butte" which buttered me,

But now I know the peat has undergone
Full sorting dried with glances,
Stalled near stallions mottled in or near
A kind of modeling that yeomen do not understand

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Detainees

Is modesty a mixed form of neglect
Aligned with seaming of the underlying
Altar cloth, I guess so, butterflies
Relax reflexively in pairs like us

Successful program means the use of
Really good young language
Steeped in processes no longer
Limited to those considered sessions

Where a clot of dowagers still mope
Out of alignment, a reciprocal low cal
Conference of window shoppers who
Obsessively and mutually confide

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Creased

Ursula entwined with Wayne made not a pretty sight

Come wither said the wizard out of work

Drains stained with ivory re-master avenues of taut black

Scuffolding means shoes go lap lap lap

A swelter strains the echo tame with worth

My gawd cried the ineligible won't we ever lease the toast

Not yet my pretty urchin cried the tonsure there are blueprints to
behold

Beheld on afterthought when rhizomes are distilled especially

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Pierced

Presumably because of far-ago he minces nothing
Syllables once untanned are bludgeoned into softest cloth
He loudens as the present reminisces
Fore- and after-taste of an injustice
All alike they are and so the pummeling recurs
And it is his
Instead of the insoluble due-faced enemy
He punches with each sound
Thus resurrects the fuel that fosters
What he would have wished he would have been then
When it had to matter and still matters

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Bus 41 on Sunday

Lunks past in half fluidity loaning the color lawn,
Projects the next best thing to sky held in a sack
While whiting out commitment to all yawning underneath

I think I'd like to surface-street a newfound glib denomination
Filled with vortices within the state line
Craft new sheet music to plunk between repeat signs

Doomed or blessed to be repeating
Constantly and cornicely as though we had a thing
To feature or conceal

The space between this motion and my thought of it
Contributes to the chaperoned delinquency of nature
In its prime with only 90 days to dwell in youth

I take a poll of seven selves who want to waive
The features favoring the matching benefits,
Get on and go somewhere

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Not a Thing to Say

What is nice to have
Imagined is this surface
Ribbon and the wind
Against

Terrain mutates butane
And so on
Verbs give life
Their perk

And when the damage
Of a warm makes room
Endowed chairs
Grow to firewood

Champion this
Stinging obvious
Refrain until
The sotto voce springboard

Whites against
Near or beside
Inimitable surfaces still plural
Free with dust

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Co-Lapse

Found ice sculptures continue on
A liveless path indebted to the round
Conforming loan emptied of mirth

Was that appurtenant derailment you just
Postulated in your temper tantrum state
Or am I mere within your wan estate

This is "I think so" territory
So let's straighten figurative seams of such

I'm constant when I lay me down to press
The leach of killjoy news and comment

Broadcloth might disintegrate when
Folderol interprets mainstream scarcity

Just once when she is speaking I would like
To hear her say another person's nearby
Sorry or the train is late or guile owns pearls

Something like that for now though
Posture needs to lean on wheels
That need to lean on roadways
Paved for the duration

 


[contributors' notes]
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