MW Murphy: Dystopian Times

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Dystopian Times                                               

 A Professor at my school

               has the virus

came in email

               last night

 take cover

 stay home.

In newly cloistered world

feel the crevices

the refractions of light

take joy in first greenings

               early spring

mourn still moist base of tree

               newly cut

amidst sun’s slowly warming rays

               protective

               against dystopian times.

Feel feel it all

               anger pain love

then ensconced alone

at keyboard

creating calm

followed by tensions

               rising

even lost in moments

               happy.

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MW Murphy is a poet and novelist. She is the author of the novel Second Daughter, which was endorsed with cover blurbs by best-selling author Wally Lamb as well as cult author and Yale professor John Crowley. Second Daughter was subsequently picked by NPR’s Faith Middleton as a “shelf-tracker” book of the month, and was also a featured book at R J Julia Booksellers. MW was selected for publication several times in the “Open Weave” poetry anthology published by Curbstone Press / Northwestern University, which also awarded her first place in its Poet Laureate Division. She has a short piece of fiction in the anthology Gathered Light which was published by Three O’ Clock Press in May 2013.  MW also has poems in the international poetry anthology series “The Art of Being Human - Volume 13, Volume 14, and Volume 15”, all of which were published in 2015, and a short story in the anthology A Shadow Map published in 2017. In addition, MW has had a poem appear on the online mag Yes Poetry and is currently nearing completion of her urban sci/fi fantasy novel The Girl in the Bookstore which takes place mostly in Manhattan’s East Village.