Two Poems by Sheila Murphy

Ars Poetica

Winter is a split-second carousel
Mightier than a river of images
Resisting frigidity imbued with force
Come spring but for now you can sing silently
To winter all pause knowingly within
Your thin frame with equally slim likelihood
Of being heard by some fictitious herd
Relentlessly loving song amid
The privacy of art within the province
Of a breathless soul looking out a gray
Window mourning some lost light while
Coveting alone time alone in
Imagination that protects the mind
From disclosure of thought found in secret
A held sheltered spring bird early arrived

Full Frontal Mirror Work

I've looked. It doesn't
Work. The mirror reflects
Even scissors. But deflects
What you can bet on:

Scars that derange
The shine. Mine
That might be
Beneath. Bequeath

Some surrogate heavy
Lifter to elude
The rift between
Two other-

Wise matched
In a set. Inset
As if insecticide
At work. Shirked.



Sheila E. Murphy. A Pushcart-nominated poet, recent of Murphy’s poems have appeared in Lana Turner, Posit, Poetry Bay, Poetose, among others. Murphy’s most recent book publications are I Want to Be Your Radio (Unlikely Books, 2025), Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025), Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). She won the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003) and the Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.