swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

Pressed Digits
Sheila E. Murphy

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Pressed Digits

I wrote my own horoscope to deflect ozone low to the ground. Avoided coffee grounds,
predicting tea’s gravity would uplift me toward branches pinging with Wyoming. May
blossoms fastened in traction would rise beyond late snow’s clouding yards and roads. I went all
Aries breathing a fling of spring into repetitive action I could track, repeat, report.
Rodomontading to an imagined self, my solid sport. I embedded a compass in my predictive
power fraught with accuracy. Spun into dance I prestidigitated would lance all opposition and
allow me to play strings as dusk brought along chilled tonic, bitters, and lime to propel my
soldiering on.

The Attention Chronicles

1/

Mariette stands on stage awaiting applause. Sees dreamed hashtags self-replicating quickly as
members of a religious sect, listening for auditory evidence of her notoriety. Holds still gripping
a tall, chilled Starbucks to winter off low-hanging summer ozone. As measured by an imaginary
gauge. Was she merely a marionette, bouncing unprompted about the stage before turning the
page?

2/

Jared knows his harmonium like the back of his homonyms. A flock of them presides where he
presumes to hide and listen for a blend. Bends his wrist to capture wheezing strains resounding
from the fingered clench.  He sometimes owns a melody and squawks a partner’s tones.
Lengthening and widening the mote around his composition apart from the audience imposed.

3/

Ashe in spirit clashes with his urge to be a tree of tresses, feathery as fresh. A place to preserve
that would in kind protect him from earned anonymity. He muses on his chosen solitude
legitimate as weeds. As syllables convene around his aura almost purpling the forest treetops at
dust in forecast wind elapsing center field of palpability singing the froth of sotto blues.

Retort

He claimed sophistication
as if a blanket excuse.
I thought to say something back.
I hurt between the lines of the staff.
The staves, infected with toxic tones
went still. I heard myself sing instead
in a whisper that loudened above
the treble clef. My half.
I took what I thought we had
earned thus owned.
The sound of crumbling changed
my view of the sun. As if a son
birthed to someone. Many syllables unsung.
Mum, the word for chrysanthemum.

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Sheila E. Murphy’s  poems have appeared in Poetry, Hanging Loose, Fortnightly Review, and numerous others. Most recent books are Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023) October Sequence: Sections 1-51 (mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, 2023), and Sostenuto (Luna Bisonte Prods (2023). Murphy received the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy’s book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Her latest collection of poetry Escritoire was recently published by Lavender Ink Press.  You can read Daniel Barbiero’s review on Arteidolia →