v6

Last Supper
  — i.m. Vince Murphy

In the house where a father lies dying,
grown-up daughters and sons
have begun surreptitiously grieving
while hospice nurses, like nuns,
murmur their grave observations:
the patient has passed beyond pain,
beyond intransigent passions
and the filial bonds that remain.

All He Whispered: 1981

In high school, everybody beat him up.
Not just the thugs, whose ire he seemed to court,
But even those who weren’t the fighting sort.
Like tiny Pete Maloney, nicknamed Pup,

Who broke his nose. Or shy, sweet Wanda Speers,
Who burst from her chair one morning in Home Ec,
Beat him down to the floor, then kicked his neck.
Neither told what he’d whispered in their ears.

Shades of Tucson: 2005

I have two trees in my front yard. Jesús,
my next-door neighbor, told me yesterday
I ought to cut the chinaberry down:
non-native, he said. The other, a eucalyptus,

was planted fifty years ago by James,
who grew up in this house, though he now lives
across the street, next door to Mrs. Chávez,
whose husband (James once told me) tried to drive

Lauds

                       My eyes open to a cry,
then flinch back shut. O Lord make haste to help me.
          Why can’t he wake up like the saints,