by Sheila E. Murphy
Place yourself where she sat on the porch swing
with a jelly jar of wine she liked not the rot gut thing
her man would sip that would take the paint off the old truck.
Feel July breeze at night and the smell of the crops
that feed us. Listen to the voice still here teaching you
this is the world. This high-above-the-river world
and the lambs and the color of the fields the few cars
living by and conversations about who is passing.
It’s all within you now, and you maybe can reach her
again, she would like that, she would have you ascend
to the place she left but will never leave. Listen to me
crave that mood around her that belief we could have
whatever we could dream, the cream after the milking
at the early morning rise and the mist above the fields our sighs.
Sheila E. Murphy. A Pushcart-nominated poet, recent appearances include Gargoyle, Poetry Bay, Lana Turner, Poetose, Volta, and others. Most recent book publications are I Want to Be Your Radio (Unlikely Books, 2025), Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025), and Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Recently performed at the New Orleans Poetry Festival and at Desert Nights Rising Stars, annual conference at Arizona State University. Won the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003) and the Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.