writings and performances by Nancy Murphy
On Sunday October 8, 2023 (2pm PST), Nancy will be featured in “Well-Versed Words,” a monthly online series created and curated by Alison Hurwitz, a widely published poet based in North Carolina.
Nancy’s poetry chapbook, The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence was reviewed in Cultural Daily by the poet George Franklin. It’s beautifully and thoughtfully written.
Nancy was invited to read her work at a long-running poetry series at the Claremont Library on September 23, 2023. She shared the reading with the Filipinx poet Angela Peñaredondo.
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
In summers of college I carried
trays of food or two coffee cups
in one hand or four platters
up my arm. A short polyester tan
colored uniform melted
to my newly bloomed body as I pinballed
around the packed Pennsylvania diner
from table to minestrone soup
to rice pudding, and finally
to the narrow opening of counter
where the club sandwich platters
appeared with young Greek
cooks holding on to one end only
releasing when I made eye
contact, wolves hungry for American
girls. Those days I blushed easily
but no one noticed, the kitchen
was always steaming, the heat
made us all a little uncivilized.
Sitting at the counter Eddie watched
me as I poured his coffee, called me
college girl, tried to tease a smile.
His truck driver compact body, black
curly hair and warm browns
for eyes, a slight chip on a front
tooth. He knew it
was a summer thing, picking me
up in his car the size of Montana
taking me nowhere and everywhere.
The slide into heat and sweetness like
the slowest quicksand. He knew
there is a time and there is a place
for some things and they don’t
go beyond that, as if surrounded
by barbed wire, electrified. He knew
he would not be visiting me
in the fall at the liberal
arts college in upstate NY.
I sensed he was right but argued
anyway, like a child that just has
to ask. But anything
less seemed cruel.
Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology 2018
like a hospital waiting room, airport departure wings are full of
small talk and long silences and what sits underneath. I see
parents sitting on either side of me at the gate
philadelphia, back when you could do that kind of thing
i always protested
they always insisted.
now I follow my honey blonde college girl around
bradley international terminal, clinging to the
seconds before she succumbs to security,
asking questions that don’t matter with urgency
do you have something to read?
she raises her hand slightly to stop me, blinks affirmatively.
we’ve already said as much as could be said
considering. she is the age when I started to
know myself. I remember so well I think
she is me, when she lets me into her worries
I remember too well: we share the same nervous system,
I feel her burdens like they are my own
mostly I am relieved she trusts me again,
I am redeemed after the silent years, the secret
years, the scary years.
north gate now, I let her release me first from
our embrace, our parting words stumble out jaggedly
whatagreatvisitgoodluckyeahitwasmomwitheverythingimsoproudofyouthankyoucallmewhenyouiwilliwillarrive
then I watch as she moves forward into the jaws
of the larger world, she doesn’t turn back
until the last second, knows I wait for this
final crumb–the one who leaves has all the power–
she raises her hand birdlike and smiles without teeth, but her eyes dance
when I play my part as the pursuing suitor waving with all of me,
I watch the hem of her trench coat follow her around the corner.
Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology 2017
Today I passed the middle of my life exactly.
It’s my call: we all pick our time of death.
It struck me undeniably like the way some
know the death of a loved one or that
they have cancer. I am Janus
looking forward and backward, sad for
what I leave, yet pulled ahead to what is
possible. Some things just can’t be transferred.
How to mark this midpoint, to linger
and savor or rush through so as not
to get caught up in the fabrics
in the doorway between then and now.
If your only fault is that I may never write
a poem about you, well, that may be
surmountable. You may have other things
I need. I need help crossing this street,
I fear carnage. Do this one thing and I
will stay in your bed all night even when
I want to roam at three a.m., find my keys
and cry in the car, missing the one before
the one who changed me irreversibly
who bound me to him with secrets.
I know it will fade, everything fades
and everything is permanent. Everything.
Eclipse, A Literary Journal, Volume Fourteen, Fall 2003
The way my mouth must move
to make the word July
the oooh curl of lips
and push of air followed
by the open-mouth roll of tongue
ends in an expression
that could be mistaken
for the way I look
when your hands calm
the outside of my skin.
This all started in June
and now the low fruit ripens,
falls onto ground carpeted
with faded jacarandas.
Alone in my bed I feel peaches
open, I hear plums softly
thud on the path between
our houses.
Mosquitos sing low in my ear
Like a persistent lover, like
a warmth from my depths
that won’t let me sleep.
Tonight I will rise, open
screen doors without regard,
find you on my porch
with no further
elaboration.
The South Carolina Review, Volume 35, Number 2 (Spring 2003)
To make love in concrete
you must start while it’s
still impressionable,
before it settles. Then it will
be indelible, imprinted
on your walkway for
the world to see.
But if you fear close contact
cement under your nails,
you can wait for lines to appear,
cracks caused by upward
pressures, roots and such,
and assemble them to
look like love.
Years later, even after disasters
that rock the ground, overturn
stones, I think you would still
find it there in the rubble;
love is that kind of thing.
The Louisville Review, Volume 52, Fall 2002
She pleads with him to join her
in the water, at first lightly,
then with a rising insistence,
and he resists. She is unhappy.
It is always the same, the woman
calling the man to her, wanting
to float together in their skin,
and he on the edge of falling,
regaining footing, then diving in
when she is not looking. He is
on his own time. Betty’s beauty
strikes me and I wonder if he sees it
anymore the way the world does,
how any other man could not
say no. I learn they are married
one year now. She talks to me
in the Jacuzzi. I tell her
I left my husband because
he would not swim naked with me
in the dark in the pool behind
the fence at our house.
Baltimore Review, Volume VI, Number 2, 2002