Sheila Murphy



Subordinate clauses max out stillness
tight inside a phased perception.
Lily still life champions blood coursing through
the macular degeneration visible to others.
Faintly now the generous, auspicious rose is tamped.
I mean the fragrant.
What is left will surface at the altar.
Come home now in time to march toward anywhere at night.
These sleeves are meant to dry.
Hands, gentle as crust.
The legends have gone cool in the abandonment of seasons.
Supine. Paced. Parsed. Pluck softened, given way.
Would you talk about what's less originally mangled?
Pacific shell crest nears the never chair.
A pendulum ingested might thus wince.
Shills gray while I panache toward elastic.
Branch coats avalanche on stalks.
Standard. Emotion. Stalls.
Would you agree. To paint.
This numbered. Rose. Against.
Your better judgment.
Slightly breathy now
Inclined toward
Penultimate.






Romance braves what it half intends.
Mentation stammers before bolding sequence after skill.
Mentalia commences interfering.
If one of us thus branches levers will go soft.
Immediacy brims with evening as a point of thought.
The louvered drawers appear to be Lourdes water washed.
This faculty of rinsing merchants its way into
Fields of what was watered,
Having come to match enculturated leaves
Lithe when sunlight passes through them.
"Has to work" possesses two meanings at least.
If crumbs match something golden, trust what senses tell you.
They begin to have resembled what one thinks there was.
A pleasant man is offering to meet what seems nearby because he is committed.
Use the word beyond, include a foreign language.
Feel the day to gradually partition,
Leavening remains in need of starch.
A moment of your time it seems will gather tins of worth.







Equivalence merchant marines one's conscience.
Look: the mockingbirds are offering their girth.
Would this new instrument accommodate a novel?
Everywhere I go, the scales are filled with hydrogen.
How much do you weigh?
What might a companion do for softness at a time?
This equals this and not (much else).
Time travel abbreviates linear lessons learned.
How does alliteration strike you, as resounding?
Use the word wonderful once more at the risk of a browbeating.
Erasure is sure fact, as much as a first marking.
Indolence recurs.
The fabric of society remains a wrinkled sheet.
How many lemons were left fastened to the tree?
Luxury does not imply insensitivity,
but when they coexist, the precipice of breakage is supremely felt,
as streamers bathe in sunshine.







Diagrammatic romance lowers the likelihood of transfer.
Course correction dominoes the spate of confiscation.
Maximum security's reserved for the transgressors.
How I show my love to you is that I stay on schedule.
"In other news . . ." The herald angels have continued singing
every moment of the morning.
Thatch is greed.
He only gives so much because he's maimed by drugs
he self-administered when it was the fashion to uproot.
Displays yield covetous beneathment.
Every few moments there are small collapses.
Meaning, I suppose, there are considered resting places between stops.
The furniture's not where it first was placed.
My supposition chances middling futures.
Trains lift fog.
Lift livelihood.
Lift statement pearly with a canvassed south beside the port.
Cease your unending relaxation and time-wasting.
North of summer where my future is, she said,
and meant it at the time, with heart.







Soon spun shores collapse.
My guarantor, would you consider a release?
She rarely slides her hand along the cello neck
before amending purse strings of commencement.
My grave old cinders mark their plot.
I'm not a relativist thinker anymore,
nor do I genuflect with passion
many of us learned to feign before a deeper faith came true.
Escapist young charade is formed when tasks begin to nudge out threadbare integers.
Could anyone be more polite than body chemistry allows?
It does not seem intended that the white things burnish in alignment.
Sophistry's the same as taste sometimes.
It very nearly gleams when placed beside commandments.





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