Project 365 + 1: fragments

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Lizz Murphy - Poem 365: This has become my language

A composition of found texts from the Heads art & text series September to November, 2016

THIS HAS BECOME MY LANGUAGE

When the showcase is over

and a woman is the normal

consciousness, everything changed.

this has become my language

trying to weave

increasingly rare encounters

just moving in the wind. I

sharing the potent stories

when asked to pinpoint the very

the broken objects

growing up in a country shaped

“I carefully walked along

in their trembling bones

paint runs in the rain

those curious sensations

hemmed her in.

in an audacious dream of

was so strung out

her on the streets

in a cardigan.”

standing out in our minds

she uses them to shut out the world

from the inside

dark reality and

something about the face

being in the right place

can’t articulate in words

think deeper.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Lizz Murphy - Poem 364: Cross my hand (nod to SSVW & SD)

A nod to Sarah St Vincent Welch #335 (after Sara Dowse #1)

CROSS MY HAND

Under the broadening light of the grapevine

lies a door waiting moldering waiting for someone

to unearth it creak it open travel downward into its

world of bury

I cross my hand over a turned page pick my way down the side of the pit a root curves under my foot and another like a thought just under the tongue In the back of my mind how we think of the worst possible scenario to help us cope with reality when it comes it might be desperate anyway

My hand aches from too many words it loses grip

My thoughts tighten and my arm my shoulder

He says it’s in the last lines the best ideas come

but I can’t hold on

her tiny wrists

as she types

one finger

at a time

A helicopter flies low In this other world there is the constant hum of motors leaf blowers mowers one crashes over sticks some vehicle reverses at length birds are in and out of the heat

There is a young mother she saunters pushing the pram with one hand her new babe cradled in the other arm her walk and rock walk and rock Nurturing Capable

Another thought - the surprise of surprised eyebrows

There is a small face then a large over there her gaunt face cheeks and eyes dragging she waits for her name to be called

Eyebrows again how to draw them the many ways mostly too high too arched

It skirrs low over the road a wide cape of wing legs like streamers pulls back at my approach rises fast

I feel these arcs in my own body before it sweeps off in its chosen direction

The power the grace