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Gulag
We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self.
- Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
The punishment is the crime, and so forth,
as I have come to expect, while I am
doomed to wander this sallow plain,
the light as hazy as discontent, no crime but
the dissidence of self-knowledge. This hollow
denouement of the desire for an interrogation
of spirit, is now mired in this open country
where light has no source but is ubiquitous.
There are no shadows, no gradations, only
the wholly mutinous self, exiled where self
must find its only light, within. And without,
only the vast whitewashed plain, the span
of this table where we dine on air, as exiles must,
where the crime is the punishment, and so forth.
Allergic
Like orgasm, 90 percent of a sneeze is sheer anticipation.
-Bia Lowe
Hay and lobster, the flank of a horse, my own
dog Max, dear creature, and your pale
blue eyes; I am robbed of my own breath, you
thief, you cunning and innocent imposter.
How is it you came to hold my heart
in your chest? Your thoughts are like pollen,
like snow, like powdery static falling
across my sleeplessness, a dark field abuzz
with the memory of your perfume. I
cannot swallow. And my skin rages and burns
as if I would not trade my soul for the cool touch
of air, smoothing itself across these fine hairs
on your belly. There is no release,
no relenting from the involuntary
spasms, the mistrust of the senses which
my body will not learn. I hear your thoughts
like a late-night radio which turns itself on
and on again. They are aloft, Miss Quantum
Physics; you know that much, don’t you?
I am allergic to the world in which you come
and go away, each breath a desperate pleasure.
Poems
© George Murphy 2004. All rights reserved.
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George
Murphy writes and directs TV commercials; manages the 24-hour
Florida Keys Information Channel and will be appearing at the
Red Barn Theater as an actor in a series of skits called
Shel's Shorts. Last Christmas, his story, A Key West
Christmas Story, served as the backdrop for a Department
store. He once ran for Mayor of Key West, pulling 47% of the
vote. On poetry, he says, simply that has given him 'eyes'. He's
finished a screenplay, White Gold, based on the
true story of an American who, in 1895, went up the Amazon in
search of his fortune as a rubber cutter. His 1989 anthology
The Key West Reader: The Best of Key West's Writers,
still sells briskly. Volume II is in the works. He says that Key
West is the greatest town in America. |
Portrait
of George Murphy © Henry Denander 2004. All rights reserved.
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Poetry
Michael Rothenberg
Diane Thiel
Nick Carbo
Mia Leonin
Michael Hettich
Campbell McGrath
Kelle Groom
Steve Kronen
Kemel Zaldivar
Pris Campbell
Michael-Earle Carlton
George Murphy
Howard Camner
Geoffrey Philp
Terri Carrion
Nancy Knutson
Jonathan Rose
Barbra Nightingale
Ian Krieger
James Brock
Amy Serrano Zorrilla
Denise Duhamel
Virgil Suarez
Micro-Fiction & Shorts
Terri Carrion
Diane Thiel
Artists
Artist Intro
Ivonne Bess
Diego Quiros
John Canning
Jeff Filipski
Arlene Magloire
Cassandra
Gordon-Harris
Holly Picano
TRES
Mia Leonin
Terri Carrion
Richard Blanco
Interviews
Campbell McGrath
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