Invited Poet

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Invited Poet

The Invited Poet for this issue is:

Rich Murphy

Boston, Massachusetts

The poems are included in a manuscript titled, Voyeur. The manuscript reports on love in the wasteland and explores lust, romance, and compassion. In the manuscript, I attempt to empathize with the woman's point of view. Over the past thirty years, I have published hundreds of poems in five countries including such magazines as Rolling Stone, Grand Street, Poetry, and New Letters. I teach poetry writing at Emmanuel College in Boston and have raised four children.

Isle of Man

The rocks sing and sailors die,

so men furnish dwellings with diamonds

to placate disaster and return

to the open intimacies of sports.

Along the masts and bows of club houses

and bar rooms the athletes fill their ears

with bees' wax while gambling on

the hometown team. Vasco da Gama

and Admiral Perry embrace each other

through parking lots when the expedition

has stumbled upon harbor time

where the dangerous maneuvers begin.

Through a sea sick periscope Babe Ruth

is plucked from on deck by Scylla's cliff,

a golfing buddy loses to Charybdis'

porcelain hole in one, while the ship's

boulders and ledges tour their own emotions

that wade from the coastline to greet them.

Counting the syllables to their first songs,

women have not set foot on this island.

The Woman Wrestler

She uses her body to steal

men's wallets and revive their dead

emotions. She'd tell a judge that she

performs a kind of CPR

and collects a fee for the service.

A childhood pout drew boys

from whom to choose and later curves

caused testosterone that then lost

control of the age of wheels.

Her presence became the tool

that almost evened the score she had

with uncles, brother, father. In marriages

men are men and busier than golf,

and tennis is the intimacy of women.

She becomes a wrinkled vault with gold

and jewels oozing out from around

its door, and any man who isn't enraged

at himself and vacationing with an intern,

remains a boy showing off to his dad.

Local Video Surveillance

A mother whose life has been bankrupted

by her son dressed in her husband's clothes

flinches with terror before each intersection

through which her mini-van daily rumbles.

Through streets to school in an empty

pick up truck hauling flapping stripes

the size of a boyhood bed sheet,

a fiancee escapes for the evening his future

at the box factory. He'd join the Marines

next year if they'd have him.

Late, the professor sips a cup of coffee

where shoppers compose piles around

tables. He could tell all the classes what

is wrong, but no one considers grammar.

And everyone needs a job.