from Nebula #38

I only remember that wide fat thick
body of guitar against my thin frame
beside your singing not the angelus but
some whiny country lament about the loss
of senseless accidental love lifted from
your own wide body and how hollow 
the mahogany or maple holding in
your sadness that persisted as I plucked 
strings maybe to soften daytime tv feel 
of not a chance in the world of rising
to imaginary love because that’s all 
there is to this life you tell yourself 
in those un-pretty tones nobody likes
against six lasting strings trying to be whole

 

Sheila E. Murphy. A Pushcart-nominated poet, most recent book publications are I Want to Be Your Radio (Unlikely Books, 2025), Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025), and Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). She won the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003) and Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.