Manzano Mountain Review
American Prayer for
Marshall, Arkansas
by Ryan Murphy
It is like my sock on a dark night caught just below
the ball slipping moorings off heel
loosing itself and weaving out void
from void the way my mind teaches memory
as my pupils open in a dark room
the way a ship nosedives down to hardscrabble
ocean floor blooming into sunflutter polyps
that feather the breeze forgotten skeletons
groaning out from rusting metal like these mountains
blossom, unfolding trees from rock to sky this is my confession
I’m rotten at origami
no better at mountains
staring from door to clouds breathing in the low places
in the chain of moments breath stitched from then to now
like the golden tunnel of light down the highway pulling apart
these strings slipping loose my foot sliding to the unthinking dark
Ryan Murphy is an MFA student at UNM, where he mostly drinks a lot of water and tries to stay out of the sun. His work has appeared in Beech Street Review, Torrid Literature, and Garbanzo, as well as a very talented pigeon delivering hand-rolled poems to upper story apartments.