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Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press

CONCENTRICITY
A new collection of prose-poems BY Sheila Murphy
*AVAILABLE by Dec. 15th, 2003, and at the special 30% off Holiday Discount price savings! Order today!

*CLICK to DISPLAY front & rear book covers (**note: this is an Adobe Acrobat .PDF file, and you will need Acrobat Reader to open )
         About the author: Sheila E. Murphy lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She is a widely published poet who has performed her work internationally. In 1999, Murphy was the guest of the Brisbane Writers Festival in Queensland Australia hosting 27,000 attendees, with several "guest readers" from Ireland and England. She read the following year in England as part of a residency in Devon for the Arvon Foundation, where she collaborated with poet/painter Rupert Loydell in facilitating a weeklong workshop. In 2000, Murphy read at the Boston Poetry Festival and for the Lit City Series in New Orleans.

    She publishes widely in literary magazines and writes prolifically, in many different styles. Prose poems, including what she terms "American haibun," are among her favorite styles.

    Since 1999, Murphy has also been engaged in creating visual work, using both digital and physical formats, some of them including text.

    Her published work is archived at The Ohio State University Libraries, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Last summer, she and several other writers/visual artists appeared as part of a festival organized by Dr. John Bennett curator of "An American Avant Garde: Second Wave," hosted by The Ohio State University Libraries.

    Following are some sample poems from Concentricity:

Of Lullaby

My orchids suffer from your paramilitary attitude. Won't you touch me? Every bit of lullaby soothes moments of the hurt, despite the uniform and lovely water. What is known of our biographies: that they belong to us and fan out into meanings. Cuff links rubbed to a dramatic shine. Pristine things swerve into relationship with seasoned elements. Can a habit be unlearned? A white shirt used to clean unruly appliances. Real flowers in the photograph appear affordable. Phases of our joining include partial poverty. Would seem refreshing as respect. As familiar as the word tulip where the flower has been unframed petal flesh. The desire to pulp a value. Quantify the fact of touch as hospitality. To temper parchment with pressed flower skin held in a book.

Faculty of memory, the way you looked, and still the earth around these other tangibles

A Limited Edition Lust

How do you reciprocate the act of smothering? Control spawns jewelry made from breath's rubbing the mirror clean and dry. One looks peaceful, while the other peeks out from behind a clumsy shadow in pursuit of independence. I watched the penmanship begin to falter into age that he could not resemble perfectly. A gentleman stepped from the shower with a pensiveness less sharable than certain. Misting some of the occasion. No one certain who he was. Few write letters anymore, much less love tunes that flow from left to right on five-lined sheets. The fabric strays from clarity to something sweet to touch as this companionship. A limited edition lust shifts conversation from a breezeway to a bold alert for rationing. Most of the men considered themselves heat lamps. Most of the women did not seek the sun. Who does not seem interesting beside a crowd of strangers? Someone truly interesting.

Elusive Paycheck

I am not a cinder. Do you blank me? What shaped mirror do I hold to you? Am diamond refund. Back to square. Am longing, lofty doctrinaire. Am long on bonds and short on coin. The squall will parse things as amendments to the lofty sitcoms. Are you there? The mozzarella leans in close. Restricts me to the gooseneck shaped like myriad filmed silvers. When will the ever promised mist come home to page? Never will get used to an elusive paycheck. Commas plunked down like collateral sing ominosity of postponement set to music. Will there ever be a there to poke fun at? My silence is presumed a symptom. I attract. For instance I can neptune clear across the hall. Perambulators glisten when presented to the swell guy learning on the banister. It used to be like peristalsis here and now it's turned to crumbs.

Template, forms of unison, shelter as withdrawal

Fraypoints

Leaves green themselves past budding. Tea malt codifies hegemony. And when we're slow, we're sampled in parentheses. The symbolism leaks fraypoints when we smother our cadavers home. Come close and water me. If I were seventy, I'd need a crane to move my books. I would avoid stilts and sip with confidence stability, panache. Near the ivy is more ivy. Near the strains of numinous vibrato I confront the real output of scars. Primacy recency adopts new flavor and delivers lumbar, texture, plenitude. How many ounces are we dancing in (dependently)? The new birds squall as they are formed. We're finding more of our declensions. Raw, from scratch, out-of-the-box the way we do, and all at once as children with blueberry mindsets all our own.

Dislikes

Dyslex, I thought he'd said. No shadow is worth being salted. His eternal award, my father stressed. Mid-course corrections seem like lobs over a short fence. Wheat grass in tiny quantities enhances what? Embarrassment surrounds the words a little slow. People laugh nervously on hearing the addendum mental. Tough becomes the next word. Distinct from Golden Mean. Are there things we can laugh off? The idea is to cease and reconfigure tepid nonchalance. The luck. And chercher (en francais) the room where we were wed then several sentences beyond the several sylls- as mussed as cabaret. Lengthwise the temperature mid-sectioning these white alert first blues tempura altogether rapt and such. The omniture. The look and feel, the sound of . . .

Vault

We have bootlegged matching body chemistries. I hear this is a suites hotel where each one's neck and neck with strangers capable of Rolfing or deciphering Egyptian characters. The lapdog of our sensibilities calms strangers. Equally, viscosity deranges pulp and garden tools and heavy-armed equipment. She said that he reminded her of slim pond prose. She was wearing six-plus pounds of tone. Levels impulsed their way to my cravat. I simply soloed out of reach and madcap heresy just out of strict conformance. It takes several spare monks to jumpstart a religion. Several under-recognized hewn minds. Cane sugar in sufficient quantity to unseam the emotions cantilevered in teased tragedies.

Concentricity

Installations house imaginary stallions. I dreamed erasure of oncoming achievement, shared thus shelved. The episode was focused on how I might say no to kin requests. The harm seemed morphine as dishonesty painted experience a cool blue. A woman to whom I'd handed my whole personality returned from the performance to alert me to simplicity. I am acquainted with this brand of hiding. People do not lean out from their beds to answer accusations, invitations, halves of hypothetical debate. All ponds appear the same to me. All anaerobic exercise seems desk time. Voluntary trapeze artistry adopted chivalry as first disguise. Historians in my experience don't gravitate toward convertibles. Rest stops dot the landscape. One of the two, en route to a funeral, plotted the likely stops. Black birds tasted sky in unison. Her eyes when closed were just as lovely, riding. She smoked gently a cigarette between hums. Obligations broke off into slogans to eradicate a feathery falsetto. Curiosity and respiration aren't the same. Amateur of course refers to the air quality. Small temple's ice changing its chemistry to water running down the stained glass windows.

The Sorting Process

She said evidence of craft within a person had its edges. She said color of the tight vest ought to be some kind of a criterion but that would never likely fly. I wondered for a moment about credibility I had all along assigned to her. I wondered how derivative I might be, standing on wet pavement, trying to construct some permaculture from the spatty pools and shiny leaves and soggy things once thrown away. What constitutes success? The way the papers read and tanned announcers have it, you would think that a prerequisite was a fleeting nature linked with imprecision. I don't mean to suggest I see a problem. Whatever rigor we can muster is as good as what uneducated people had after exposure to great minds that placed in cupboards various ideas that served several people's purposes long enough to stick. Even ardent prejudice has sold well and continues to, depending on positioning. Depending also on competing headlines, and what has won the coveted attention space of fifteen seconds, during which the listeners tell themselves they are committed to this learning and will follow through of course with lives that prove their good intentions.



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