By Jessica Murray
For a sign, a pinhole in the firmament,
and me the open eye.
Peace without stasis, each mellow fruit
eaten.
To feel what the light feels as it bends
through any two surfaces—
These are things I’ve asked the universe for,
but never the world.
The universe, we say,
provides.
Is it because we’ve made the world
in our image,
or because each time we fall in love
is a hopeful reiteration
of the same old question: why something
instead of nothing?
Or why this thing, instead of any other?
Those wrecked bodies
in far away places, or near—children’s
closets with their clumsy
ropes and silent, watchful shoes:
that’s just the world, you say,
muscling in on the universe.
Then hold me
like a supplicant, let’s pretend
we’re innocent
as space in the teacup of time. I’m tired
of listening to this voice
in my head when, you can ask anybody,
I’m already begging.
Jessica Murray is a poet and educator living in Denton, TX. Recent poems of hers are featured in or forthcoming from Barrow Street, Berkeley Poetry Review, Guide to Kulchur, Memorious, Painted Bride Quarterly, Shenandoah, Sixth Finch, and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. Her website, www.if-you-want-to.com, features linked interviews with contemporary women poets.
