Drive

I vagrant my way half north to you.
Insected trees foreground the lovelorn mountains.

Lone mountains creased with flesh like wounds.
I keep my destination in mind, winding.

Winding around invokes elasticity.
Feathery windshields brushed once persist.

Flick-of-wrist antithesis of goal posts.
I talk to the fiction of my tall goal.

I think achievement a fictive flick of ghosts.
Host points moisten the road ahead.

Ahead on road shoulder, cracks where flowers live.
Some infant flowers rise to the unmarked sun.

A way to learn the sun is to view flowers.
I vagrant my way half north to you.


Sheila Murphy

Sheila E. Murphy appeared or is forthcoming in Verse Daily, Fortnightly Review, Poetry, Lana Turner, Hanging Loose, and others. Most recent book: Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025). Won the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Won the Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy

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First Kiss

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How Winter Came