The scalding outdoor tubs were lined with ice like sex; the bewildering thrill of winter flowers; and midnight at noon.
My sweater, knit by hand from lamb’s wool. And the girl that Christmas on the radio news murdered by two sailors from a shipping liner.
George Michael, too, singing my god I don’t even think that I love you… —The fleet of Swedish homes along the lake’s
a pretty portrait, and while I stare some schoolboys adjust their snowman’s phallus. Enormous, this rhombus of countryside
from the window where my breath appears inscrutable. Allusive, distant from myself, like a glacier
across Faxaflói bay, an algal paste of blue; the unnerving calm and underworldly hue of the view of the cathedral Hallgrímskirkja.
"Grief"
Miguel Murphy
Grief
A man, dust wiped down his face, crying out What— What— Crow, his stygian drawl. What will do in the red wordless epic of hard desire; fire. A hundred- foot woodpile. A herd of slaughtered sheep. Fat; oil. Two-handled jars of bronze honey. Four stallions, their necks cut— two of his nine dogs slain. Twelve Trojan boys, captives from the wars. Fawns! Blood, hair; “Wicked things.” Lungs. Nape. Heart. Neck. His dead friend. The naked pixelated accumulation of what used to be meaning, unsalted; the blurring exquisite fact he wiped the limbs himself from foot to forehead in slaughtered cattle grease, the crooked horns, frightened by what happiness. Patroclus, his lovely eyes! His clothes. The purple gingham pulled shining from mud now set atop the pile of skinless carcasses… In translation, looking up, hands cupping viscera, frightened by fate, or accidental heat.
Miguel Murphy is the author of the chapbook JUNE! and three previous collections of poetry. He lives in Southern California where he teaches at UCLA and Santa Monica College.
