TWO POEMS

Conor Murphy

Copyright © 2005 by Conor Murphy. All rights reserved.

AFTER THE SMOKE SERMON

We gather 'round the fire now,
Interred within the shadows.
Latching on to the withered sow --
          The shadows like headstone rows.
. . . In utterance of a general moan . . .
          Not knowing that the rhetoric flows
Against the current of our mouths,
Across our inward pointed toes.
          Closet collectivism our sacred cow.

I stare into the flames that lie
Just beyond the tree line there,
Cutting loose from a whispered sigh;
          Seeing through the smoke filled air
Each shadow like a purple headstone,
          Not hoping to penetrate the blank stare
Of that oh-so-unique socialite,
          Who's so elegant
          So intelligent,
Dancing the dance of death with flair.
          I'll dance it alone -- an individualite.

INUNDATION OF A RAT

Well I, I sold my soul to God,
Though solely did I brink, bitch, and buy back --
As a prisoner, his privilege to retract,
Will flail, flog, and fink -- a silly, flawed

Instrument of -- now do not think it odd --
Monument to commemorate the lack
Of clown, hangman, and judge, all three in black.

Excuse the first, he only in motley.
Second -- Do you hear him? -- He said: "A scarf."
"A scarf?" quotes the third, "For whom to strangle?"

Insipid inner-city lights can carve
A balcony from which -- Look! -- the angel
Places a triumvirate in his absence,
Plowing an abysmal reticence.

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Pithy Fiction

Pithy Fiction

Short Fiction:

Jessica Wineteer / The Sharpest Tool in the Shed

Harold Jaffe / Revolution Post-Mill

m. benedict / the fountain

Shane Jesse Christmass / Case Report into Clairaudience

Tantra Bensko / Clock

Jessica Hayes / Notification

Shane Jesse Christmass / The Modern of Tongues

Daniel King / The Interpretation of Life

Ashok Rajamani / White Men Can't Jump, Er, Tie a Sari

Harold Jaffe / Excerpts from Paris 60

John Darling / There Must Be Cowboys

Edwin Decker / Armageddon of Queer

John-Patrick Ayson / atrophy

Stephen W. Potts / Zone of Silence

Harold Jaffe / Warr Games

William Terry / Affection Interchange Program

Juventino Manzano / Vestige to Visage

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky / A Beetle in an Anthill

Harold Jaffe / Bela Lugosi

Tyrone Nagai / Lola and Jean

Jefferson P. Swycaffer / In Search of The Fuehrer

Don Traverso / Dysecdysis

Thomas Logan / Ghost Dance Soliloquies

B. F. Price / Animals Were Harmed

Jefferson P. Swycaffer / The Gift that Keeps On Giving

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Devin Walsh / Felix Culpa

Tony Zurlo / What Did You Do During the War, Daddy-O?

Stephen W. Potts / One Thousand and One Nights

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Don Traverso / Tuesday 10:30 AM

Frank Norris / Comida

Don Traverso / Mist

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Stephen W. Potts / Loose Ends

Kirsten Noelle Hubbard / An Elegy for the Uninvited

Conor Murphy / Think Nothing of It

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Chris Tannhauser / See-Through

Stephen W. Potts / Apocalypso

Mark Twain / Letter to the Earth

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Brad Lyke / Murder Takes Your Wings

Stephen W. Potts / The Lord's Work

Conor Murphy / Two Poems: After the Smoke Sermon and Inundation of a Rat

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Stephen W. Potts / The Commuter

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Alan Wade / Wonder Woman, Hungry

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Stephen W. Potts / In Your Dreams

Chris Tannhauser's novel Tears of the Wounded Sky:

Chapter 9: A Patient Darkness
Chapter 8: Backflash
Chapter 7: Scars and Angel Wings
Chapter 6: PR1Σ$+
Chapter 5: Fierce Orbits
Chapter 4: Dead Playboys
Chapter 3: Tabula Rasa
Chapter 2: Blood Sneeze
Chapter 1: Screams Like Meat
Prologue: God's Dogs