The Ofi Press Magazine

  By Rich Murphy, USA (Published in Issue 3)

Faulkner's Blackbirds

Granted last wishes by penance’s

premeditated guilt execute a mockery

of the corpse. Each desperate family

member paws surfaces for a separate

salvation, and the contours of crudity

lowers each into a hole of I. Scrambling

from the edge of a grave, the clan’s

protector abandons the welfare

of members growing further into

poverty. No match for the ferry

of desire, the river Styx robs them

the last of their dignity. Jefferson

would deny their existence, while

the oldest sinner escapes with a smile.

Each one of the seven story tellers

conceives another therapy in readers.

Double Vision

The crows and their scare, a golden bird,

negotiate over their field of corn. The kernel

by kernel pecking order rap love songs

against the inherited destitution, ensuring

a glazed red wheelbarrow another day.

The fowl of the silver spoon, stuffed with

the hay of a human, mimics Christ, the sun,

while harvesting literacy’s richest and most

distant rows. Flapping the permanency

privilege, the menace of the airwaves perform

Rich Murphy lives in Marblehead, MA and teaches writing at VCU.  Credits include the 2008 Gival Press Poetry Award for his book-length manuscript “Voyeur;” a first book The Apple in the Monkey Tree; chapbooks Great Grandfather, Family Secret, Hunting and Pecking and many others.