Poet by Miguel Murphy

Poet

                        —to Ai

What year? We met
at the desert pawn shop,
The Rare Lion,
an empty strip mall

where I memorize
the asphalt lot in Arizona,
114 degrees.
Touch your books.

The kid shoots
his sister with a shotgun
stealing her doll.
“A wind from nowhere”—

The truth is worse: your breast.
A word, a rumor growing.
You don’t tell anyone.
Your silence. Laughter

I still don’t understand.
Why not let the doctors?
We dance again to Moby.
Improbable mist.

Who can make sense of it?
The Superstition
Mountains, another dawn
apparition.

The Night kills so slowly.
Like the flesh
of a loved existence.
You appear—

You will not speak.

Miguel Murphy is the author of Detainee. He lives in Southern California where he teaches at Santa Monica College.