These three poems by Joddy Murray reveal the significance of the insignificant: the unseen and unsaid…
by: Joddy Murray
EARTHWARD
“Try, my philosopher, this world.”
—Czesław Miłosz from “Poet at Seventy” (1986)
Where else will mountains stare so intently at the skies
while never blinking away? Part of my problem is temporal,
like Easy Bake light bulbs. Solzhenitsyn said something
like everything should be “the concern of all,” but I’m
easily bored and there are too many types of boredom
to be concerned about. Whistle with the sweeter wind,
the one not hesitant to curl in on itself like a salted slug.
Bathe me with your own sweat, from the inside out.
NOCTURNALITY This is the window with the cracked sill, fissures traced in creek-bed dendrology, like those EKG’ed on skulls. You can play them like a record if you listen and give them breath. Syringes pull almost as often as they push. Night birds on the lawn should be sleeping as you are in our bedroom, piled high with fabric. There is a canvas, some ink. When I am almost alone, the skeleton inside shudders around in an inverted sneeze. It’s rare to let it out, willy-nilly, all those bony cracks and crevices eager to hear themselves roar another time.
SCATTER What we bleed and tolerate is the sum of suffering. Not much is as dangerous as laughter. You are not instinctive, you are solid as masses, solid as fear. What you know about love is the same as peace: something buried, something blue. Where is love, is glance, is brow? I wept when I’ve forgotten how turnstile moons wipe their dust across the night.
Joddy Murray’s chapbook, Anaphora, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 70 journals, including, most recently, El Portal, Birdy Magazine, The Torrid Literature Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, The Fourth River, Prism Review, Nude Bruce Review, OxMag, Flights, Perceptions Magazine, Cape Rock, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, and Sou’wester Literary Magazine. He currently lives in Marion, Illinois.
