Sheila Murphy
Mildewed, Dude
Friday's clouds are mildewed,
dude. Smell rude. Listen to
them fail to bark like
a debate partner mutely
deer-in-headlights pause.
No stirring of branches
on olive, eucalyptus trees,
Chinese Pistache.
I live weather that weathers
me. My body memorizes
particular dates and times when
oncoming rain matched a motel afternoon
of housekeeping carts
and daytime TV purring from door
after door along the hallway
patted down with indoor-outdoor carpet.
And weather sleeps in me as if
together we longed rather than
belonging to some fictitious locus
where gravity failed to postpone
inherent fireworks of the body
sweeping up crumbs of friction
by rote from pathways and thoroughfares
making a medley or a hash
of living out a week.
Ultima Thule
I hear the throat of a frog improvising
Wit that I project from this distal
piercing supposed to connote
a thing. Various posses of quilters
remark on the maiden-
hair fern we agree has no place
but the about face racketeering among
soul scented whereabouts that cling to be-
longing, as if.
I want to martyr the Marriott in the way
of my fright-seeing in the nubile wood
that charms me as pretesters milk
the very system of inhabitants inhibiting
my strides mimicking long-leggedly
advancing Sharpies about to disfigure an other-
wise perfectly good sketch on thin
Japanese paper who can afford to buy.
Rapport is usually winded in the corps
and promulgates some hairshirt lore
of lemon limey unclean granularity
that unseams the shed where woodwinds loom
in silent solitude to hatch some unintended
honestly false start.
We’d Love to Hear from You
Stand down, Foxy Loxy.
Merde to you and your fake buoy-
ant farm framing a target aud-
meaning me and my bewilderness
with pluck and stains and verbatim claim
of being the answer imposed on us
all bless-cursed with ears
to erase purported anxieties you
climb onto based on non-news
all clues to what not to do or think
about. Am I clear (Don't answer rhet-
Butler questions, s'il vous plait.
I'm distrait on purpose when it comes
to you and your click bait hate
and siphoning the marvels
the owned marbles that belong to
other than you and your miserable
out-takes. So take back your ravenous
mistakes and fix them with epoxy.
Private People
The parents couldn't wait to get into the house
as neighbors shouted: "Where were you? Where'd you go?"
The children wanted to tell,
but the parents whisked them across the driveway to the door.
"It's none of their business," the father said.
"Just go in," the mother said.
The parents knew all the people they wanted to know.
"I don't like meeting people, but I meet them well,"
the father said.
The children didn't know whether to laugh.
The children wanted to acquire friends.
It seemed a good idea to come home at night, not during the day
when all the voices were out with their curiosity.
The children almost wanted to obey but needed peers.
Janet’s Getaway
Janet hosts herself
in her own spare room
for a small vacation by herself.
She fingers the oboe
left to her by relatives
relatively unknown to Janet.
The smell of the case
where the instrument has been
deposited resembles sheet music
in the stacks.
Janet likes as a destination
this comfortable distance
from which she can sit look out across
vast manicured yards that sprawl in green.