Aurora Poetry Winner
and Publication in July 2022 Issue
Nancy won an Aurora Poetry prize in late 2020. The winning poem “How Isolation Is Like Summer” was just published.
writings and performances by Nancy Murphy
Nancy won an Aurora Poetry prize in late 2020. The winning poem “How Isolation Is Like Summer” was just published.
Remember the slow heaviness of August
in Albany,
the 60s, sixth grade
everything exhausting
from humidity,
excessive greenery suffocating,
days stretching in our hands like
the wonder of boardwalk
taffy that never breaks, it just gets thinner
and thinner and thinner.
Remember when effort was pointless,
when summer kept us
low to the ground, sitting in the art
of doing nothing, tree filtered sunlight
moving across our freckled faces
as we spoke
quietly, like whispers might keep us
cooler.
Picture us young, self-contained, still
whole. Breathing the not knowing
of life like
it was our daily bread.
Oh the trouble with looking
for things, what you find.
This impossible brokenness of
motherlessness,
how that grief lies in wait for you,
coiled, attacks only in self
defense, no one wants
to be forgotten. Memory
is a mother.
Is all this time on our hands
keeping us safe
from ourselves?
Maybe we need
to reopen, I’m dreaming
of a long drive to the mountains,
any mountains.
Aurora Poetry, Vol. 4, July 2022
After my mother died, I left my husband.
He had always been a rock
but I stumbled upon someone more
like fire, and I needed to ignite,
breathe into the blue edge of a flame,
find myself in what remained.
It’s Friday night, I slice into red peppers.
My new man scorches them on the grill
along with sweet corn, chicken in dried
thyme, Spanish olive oil. Together
ten years and I still call him new.
This is just how I talk, tell myself I’m free,
remind myself that I could be reduced to ashes
again. Sometimes I’m afraid that only burning
can purge this longing, for all that’s lost,
for those careless nights and all that blazed.
Montana Mouthful, February 2022
The “Lost and Found” Issue of Montana Mouthful includes “Aftermath” by Nancy Murphy.
Nancy was invited to be a featured poet in the weekly series Wednesday Night Poetry, on Facebook.
Nancy was a featured poet for “Poets on Craft” at Cultural Daily, an online arts and culture magazine.
(more…)The Summer 2021 Issue of Gyroscope Review includes “Sometimes a Wild Saint.”
(more…)After Tom Hiron, Sometimes a Wild God
Sometimes a wild saint will storm in while
you’re at the stove
searing steaks,
tapping smoked paprika
onto sweet potatoes. She’ll start
a fire in the blue room, open the best
Burgundy without asking,
crank up
the Stones. Sometimes a wild saint
is not exactly
drunk, (but not undrunk)
maybe beyond
drunk like I was
in my twenties after work
in bars with married co-workers.
I’m not here to confess, I’ll just say
I have seen how things can break
down, how anything can be
forgiven, how miracles are not
that rare really.
Sometimes a wild saint
is such a martyr, deadly
serious. But I’m
not going to fall
into that deep
well of belief again, the longing
that follows, all that embarrassment
when god doesn’t show up
in time.
Sometimes a wild saint
will remind us that there will be summer
again, that I will be able to go underwater
and feel cool on my entire head
and not even care
if my hair ever
dries.
Gyroscope Review, Issue 21-3, Summer 2021
The international arts game published the poem “Know My Tree” in their April 2021 online launch.
(more…)A tree is a prayer without words, without reason, without apology. Yet
not without sound, I hear
a low whirr when I am close to a willow, I see the medicine of its
knowledge dance under dark
purple bark. I trace the lines of its hands to the ends of the limbs I
want to climb, watch
how leaves confetti in the breeze, an explosion of spring greens and
saffron
yellows against an afternoon indigo sky. I want
to rest, hang from my tail,
sleep and eat
like an animal.
I want to know
my animal. I want
to know my god.
I want to know
my tree.
I need to be
washed in a rain
of forest, cleansed
of my faults,
my failings,
my falsities.
All the moments
I could have
done better.
We are all
standing under
some tree,
of life, of death,
of transformation.
How thankless
I’ve been! I wish
to save a tree
to save myself
to save
the world.
I don’t know
where to start
so I will just
start with this
tree under a black
sky believing in the sun.
Telephone, April 2021