Poems

A SELECTION OF POEMS © LIZZ MURPHY

You might also like to visit www.project365plus.com.au where in 2016 Lizz and a number of other inter/national poets posted new work every day for the year. Project coordinated by Kit Kelen.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF PEAR

Lizz Murphy

1.

One pear is built by its words the other assembled in paint

lake strokes swirling into wide pear base

They are plain canvas  torn duck  numbers running in reverse

2.

To make an edifice of pear

fashion first a coracle

a wherryman  a crescent moon

3.

One pear skips a page

This pear is made from old texts

and the must of books

4.

If a pear is juicy it is also soft

So is decay

have you thought about that?

5.

Each word about a pear is a word out of it

I assemble it I destroy it the annihilation of pear

The first bite is with a knife

6.

A pear is an ancient

I hold its history

it rocks in the hull of my hand

I splinter the pear

There is the knife again

but the brush has most command

even more than the tongue

although it does not have taste

It brings me refuge as the sea is breath

7.

At the moment no-one is next to me

just the pear  the other is a core

8.

There is something about pears and newspaper

They read so well together

— Awarded joint first place (with Kristen Lang) in the 2011 Rosemary Dobson Award, a national prize offered by the ACT Government (Canberra). Since published on the artsACT website and in Award Winning Australian Writing 2012 (ed. Adolfo Aranjuez, Melbourne Books 2012).

BLACK TAXI
Lizz Murphy

It takes a few days for my own

accent to be

everyday again for the internal

compass to

not swivel the head except when

there is a

variation of dialect a new end of

the city or

a sharp twist in a stone walled

country road

Or a Swedish backpacker asking

directions

in the Sinn Féin bookshop Can I

walk she says

Oh yes you can but a black

taxi tour

will tell you everything you want

to know

And you know she is really

asking is it safe

— Previously published on the Linen Memorial Community Website and in The Ulster Tatler.
This poem is from a return visit to Belfast, (Northern) Ireland in 2008, after 40 years in Australia. The famous black taxis have a history of their own and these days provide tourists with tours of the city and other parts. There are quite a few websites promoting the tours but for a more personal account by a visiting journalist and a Black Taxi Tour via an accompanying Youtube video, visit Café Babel.

THE BUDGERIGAR

Lizz Murphy

You open the door to my cage

I play                                   

UP the stairs

     and

down

                       again

                                    finger

                                        to

    finger

entertaining your Sunday visitors

After all I saw the bigger bird

you had for Sunday roast

     — from Portraits (PressPress, forthcoming January 2013); 
       previously pubiished by The Canberra Times




LANDSLIPS

Lizz Murphy

Look down that squinty street

where the greasy moon hovers

floodlights the turret chimney-run

Your rawboned hand

roams to that white place

your fingers are linnets

leave strange wings

Haphazard seas drown us out

grainy winds tow us in

no words for the landslips

the whitebait of our memories

We didn’t take enough photos

We said that

     — from Walk the Wildly (Picaro Press 2009 RRP $5 pb 27 pp) an example of the beautifully produced and very affordable Picaro Press chapbooks. 
NB Ginninderra Press has taken over Picaro - Walk the Wildly will be reprinted this year.


FOOTAGE
Lizz Murphy

The shoe

as a missile

is a farewell kiss

is an insult

is a minor offence

is an international crime

is an ugly act

is a curse

on a world leader

is from the widows

is from the orphans

is from those

who were killed in Iraq

This is the footage

        — from Six Hundred Dollars (PressPress 2010)

HERE WE COME

Lizz Murphy

Our whole lives are broken down journeys

vehicles that spit and fizz with too many mendings

too much age

Wheels worn into the constant blue-black of bitumen

the endless signature inked into suburban arteries

and now across deserts

the red skirt dissected

the stiletto heel stab of rain rare indeed

Only in our heads

despondent as birds standing watch over dead loves

knocked down by speed

pasted to the wake left by two worlds colliding

How concise is colonization

country to country and now planet to planet

Look out Mars here we come

ready or not

—    from Stop Your Cryin (Island Press 2004 RRP $15 pb 66 pp)
More poems from Stop Your Cryin at: http://sites.google.com/site/lizzmurphypoet

SHOPPING FOR CHICKENS

Lizz Murphy

Old women white skin

left without sunshine

Light pulpy flesh

scent of kill freshness

keen as axe heads

And at home preparing

worn wood chopping board

slicing and trimming

spicing basting

between plump legs

breadcrumbs herbs

pungent onion

And after

The cleaning

A nobule of white meat

a sliver of pink tinted

translucent

Clots of rich blood

My kitchen table

is dirt-ground and flies

My kitchen knives

Old blades rusting

Or already blood smeared

I am old woman chicken claws

keeping young girls pure

Their fathers send them

their mothers bring them

I no longer hear the screams

as village women straddle them

hold them still their limbs apart

Or the crude cut of skin

the wrest of paltry pieces of

flesh from their child bodies

Afterwards legs lashed

for primitive healing

        If I was making soup

        I would truss this chicken

        with coarse string

        just like my grandmother

        her fast hands work-moist

        She never could understand

        how my grandfather

        hated the taste

        Maybe he knew this poem

        was already in my veins

— from Two Lips Went Shopping (Spinifex Press 2000 RRP $19.95 pb 145 pp)