Prayer, Rupture, Dwelling
a collaboration
by:
Sheila Murphy and Charles Alexander
Working Note
This poem was begun from an idea discussed during a visit by Sheila to my studio in Tucson. I suggested we start with one of us sending a very brief poem, and the other would respond with a prose response to that poem, plus a new short poem. The other would then respond in kind. This has continued for well over one hundred back-and-forth movements, as the poem has developed to be a sort of weekly, sometimes daily, record which is the intersection of our particular attentions and issues that have come up as the material of the poem. One can see when one participant wanted a change and issued a sudden departure, or when another mandated a return to materials left behind earlier, when the responses were thematic and when they were specifically language-based, or, as often happened, both. Altogether, it is a collaboration of minds concerned with language and music, and with their relation to daily living and meditative thought. Perhaps even more than that, a record of friendship, even an entry into that particular relationship.
— Charles Alexander
Prayer, Rupture, Dwelling
Watching taps the capability of breadth connect—was there a luxury somewhere in seeing the imaginary index cards around the personal? Investment comes from constellations we invite into the body as perspectives meld. An icy moment of cognition cracks instant fusion of the wonderful with danger. One’s own breath alive in two small bodies with intentions independent still and always recognizable. Spoken from this from distance of another kind. Imagination lives where history and feeling dampen, which may mean deepen, intellect.
pantlegs wet from
having ventured
sheepish rows of history
intone
intact
a moment able-bodied,
freed (conjoined with),
equal signs
from fields, reflexive,
full-willed act,
attending
History is that which passes, not being looked at, possibly through a telescope. Set pitch theory strives to describe a flexible tone system which may begin at any point. Derived from beauty.
as we assume from wanting
row merrily until afternoon
sip from a goblet unmentioned
yours and there, leg up
from under, forest stone
as if unstepped, stopped
lost pages of a book recovered
can study unobtrusively voices
reached through biology’s vice
or almost there, she walks at
nine months, holds steady during
fall down stairs, athletic as
defining patience, art and
abstinence having no place, here
Motion amplifies. How we know one of us. Has/had existence. Trophiable movement. In some way to indicate. A rush of moving . . . parts. Acquainted. Sourced. Reliability, more important in this culture than validity. Happens repeatedly apart from happenstance.
be twice
the fierce
athlete,
aesthete,
pilgrim toward cavity’s antithesis
a cold floor’s gravity’s inducing
darkness where
a structure veins
its way
Rising and inside, music from which. This can happen. Eleven women around a conference table, writing. One of eating the whole pie then going to bed. This too is athletic, feat of senses, caesura. Falling to the floor, as once, twice, not even wanting (nothing but the absence, gape). Yes, has had such.
brown because
not said
yet or before
she cautions
of color of
things that
carry some
other lumen
from where
or
brown
because
I
have
not
said
that
yet
I
said
that
Already here and working / Therefore not / Anymore the issue of beginning / Notes occur among themselves / It is unlikely to reside apart / Instead, the midpoint of engendering and being / Lifted / Until the act is indistinguishable from / The full participation.
how are they
different from
how are we
same a
pause measures
acquaintance
bow then stretch
the instrument
The universe and the multiverse, as though prefixes are fixes. It all turns. Part is hips, patience now. Middle west, middle passage. Places are not fixed.
how, she asks
for cause
or cleared
space of silent
pleasure, not
saint or so etched
measure among
life on shelves
Then, matter of moment. Sound that captivates. Different hearings trace, release, rejuvenate old matter. Until a quick, the measure of a day.
thought
and sheer
as uninvited
beauty of the shelves
I will be listening
Dear S: You ask if __________and it makes my _________ jump. Curious, the air comes in. As from a watching point, considerate. What are we doing here?
as am
just I
with twenty
watts, hymns
again, pews
arranged
for exit
moves despite
mysterious ways
Mist and myst. The triune off-chance that these different roads. Means scamper. Something different from express. The violin’s first choice of clef. Having attached (been) to a process, what to do now but accept harmonics when they
what makes
power (factory
factorum
what makes precog
what makes
who oils things
and when
the litmus
gossip
Power makes itself, permission granted from populace, without having authority or appropriate questions. Here four lines begin with questions: what, what, what, who. This could be gossip, but oil runs the business and makes everything the market. Speaking among siblings.
factor in
the less obvious
and last night
working on
twelves, not
apostles or
dominos, old
theory, recognized
when paper turns
blue, saying
what, who
Theoretical siblings chance twelve things to talk about. Eggs in cartons. Shells of paper blue, a robin’s. Watching may be a way of working. Spectators, good sports.
intersecting
rink and blade
unmeasured
rainbow and
deciduae
The first time, winter 1993, I held her, four years old, as she took first careful steps on the ice, barely willing to hold her own weight, and at the same time, waiting for nothing. Three years later, friends took a printing press into an ice house and printed what is presumably the first book in America printed on ice. The light can be nearly blinding there. The sounds in spring, preceding thaw, are sometimes a threatening boom. This allows no alterity, well defined social space.
decidedly so
altered if
outside enters
rain on white
two not quite
contrary meeting
as from among
the common
I’m thinking of a little bench just for the ice of which we could be certain. Where it might be possible to sit without awaiting something. During forty-some first days of incubation, closed my eyes. Now reflect likely dispassionate and frightened source of touch. Of nurses’ hands suspecting I might break.
objects singing
as they change
places with boundaries
unconscious laundry list
of what to do
is absent
understood
She’s dreaming in two white hats except with an eye for what they might have been doubtful. When that could write perhaps from stand under allowing artifice. Throughout thunderous middle nights from sighting, opened her fingers. Then mirror possible eruptive or threatened mouth from push. With intern’s feet under we will open.
turned voice
from leaf under
foot where no one
minds the water
asks what needs
answer here
conscious push
The shelters woven first arrange themselves. Conscious of ten looking temptations. Whose idea elements? A pronged acceleration feeds four cushions in the rocking again water. A new chair not six feet from me. Old cushions with a lamp. A hammer sound through open screen. Safety in process.
interruptions
inadvertent tapping
of wrought iron
voice and airplane
stirring sounds
neglected from
this small cell
found on a neuroscience site:
Shuffle Brain — can a scrambled brain remember?
The Beast’s IQ—hidden facets of intelligence
Hologramic Mind—what’s really real, anyway?
Microminds—can bacteria think? hurt? enjoy?
Human Brain Shrinks, Yet Human Being Thinks
Brain Swapping—excerpts from the book, Shufflebrain
Holologic—an Asa Zook dialog on the nature of holograms
Split Human Brain—our divided selves
Musical Brain—the gentler side
Optics of Memory—heck of an engineer!
lemon’s whole
yellow strength
stirring small
cells, facets
found gentler
neglected, divided
candles left
unblown, entered
from all sides
In and out of character: ribbons of attempted definition: clatter of hopped up thought: acres of bacterial towns: mayoral youth: among the commonalities of cells: lines between points between lines at these speeds.
something whole
still uninvited
hospitality extracts
wait time
from evolution
On a door to a child’s room, a picture of a single angel. This is the entry, whether invited or hospitable. Time for dinner, time for bed.
open pores
attached to
flow of water
ankle and
thigh attract
lute until
morning
Routine learning to count routine. Within its pores, a flow. (A flaw) Of elements less imperative for functioning than movement, spaces, history between. How did magnet come to be a noun? The narrow pathways sketch our sleep. Control is currency. Also the root of stories.
panel of experts
dramatizes whole meal
factuality
that undergirds a motion
someone must have
seconded
Nothing is routine. This is the nothing that is routine. Flaw is law is flow. These equivalencies are definitions. These definitions are equivalent. History is sleep. How did root come to be a verb? Where is
walking (another definition).
cancel everything
among the underguarded
nation second to
none rah and rah
the virtual becomes
tool, second to
minute, our
desire colluding
Trances eek out flaws (minute), rooted in tens of tenses. Nothing can be ca suffit within the realm of guarding. Leisure to be referenced without braces. Externality’s a throw rug for some neighbor. Visual or liner or just sham? Shaman opts for swoon from new externals.
virtual’s harmonic
point of lift:
sound plays
fusion of the planned
unplanned
a hand with instrument
in mind intending
aim that still
surprises
If harmonic, what are the intervals? Point to planned, lift to still. These are the conjunctions we live by, sound to planned to unplanned to hand to mind to tend. Tend well, shepherd, the sheep are not lost in the field. We are full of surmises.
release the place
the gift among
strings, two
hands point
to light, not
tuned or untuned
aim to ache
still gift
stray light
Stray from path, another // String that wasn’t there // Lead equivalent to follow // Path defined as more than once // Tuning the prompt that has succumbed to a merange of weather. // Light’s happy accident above brushed string releasing every kind of heaven //
thirty shepherds
and a single sheep
geography of snow
where I would walk
to learn
what I know now
Striking for what makes a line, even if composed of one element, the earth under or over haunts of wool, off line and white, jumping through commands as one or two weep, I know not. A marriage whether or not composed.
thirty includes
punctuation, strike
aleph chord sounds
from single
letter, shifts
graft world
to pencil
line where
you would
you would
Wood close to snow and off-white wool. Prerequisite of punctuation, sensory inclusion of first line I would have heard before accomplishing the marks in pencil made one-at-a-time. Eventually a chord within, a certain wilderness.
we spoke in quiet
of her mother,
eighty, living
out some numbered
pain and little
hope, the urge:
connect, to have,
to gather,
and to store.
my own grew, learning
motions of
matte finish sheep
beside coldwater river,
moist days soft
like this, she is alive
and thrives.
I have her speech,
her spirit, health
from far away,
answer to prayer.
Why the familial, and the finish, gloss or matte, and why now? Prayers themselves are the point, regardless of answer — motion. The romance of the moist has no numbers, but counts.
wave wife
mother car
edge color
speech self
dawn write
fire public
skin house
throw point
How we find our way through paths or make new comes to color, architecture, furnished or unfurnished centeredness. Skin is house, (the point of) edges, protection, or the motion . . . just released from . . . Romance that consistently waves off speech. Nest empty of magnet is itself magnetic.
voices in the rain
inside the house
all eyes on few
remarks and perspiration
evidence to equal
currency’s
remains
in dwelling
selves among the
fabled
A four-year-old imagines her grandmother playing basketball, thinks herself a mother, protects the rain. This is the house, we dwell. Manners remain evidence, perspiration evaporates in a like manner. Only choices are diction, how we find color, among.
one sings old
song another
strikes a word
against air
this fable
remains unsolved
far from
the table
she writes
one mark after
another
my water place
my end of reason
my asking for charms
my hourly voice
my book
Is this sentence a remark? Things in people weigh sometimes a difference. Some meant to be songs. Some with aspirations not to be so light. There would have been an object. In a mark there might have been some talk you could not take down. Choice chances a renewal and then chains. A very like full thought maybe of water, just one at a time.
a dwelling has its
paced wide
rings like trees
another table
from which
to confide
As dwell takes its shape from habit/habitat/habitation, the prayer widens to find trees and tables. Confident in one’s skin, that house of no owner. “The place where a word originates in her body is the physical source of her sense of beauty.” That word cuts, pastes, sits on the outside, inside two pieces of paper. Pace is endurance. “Ring true” has no answer. The verb lives in a house with open windows.
all the eating
at tables
conversation
smell of onions
potatoes today
green
wears its path
sustain
a fact
cells
forgetful
rocks
origins and
decisions
because
we inhabit
bodies
BIO: Charles Alexander’s books of poetry include Hopeful Buildings (1990), Arc of Light / Dark Matter (1992), Pushing Water parts 1-6 (1998), Etudes: D & D (2001), and several others. He is the director of Chax Press in Tucson, Arizona, as well as a poet, essayist, teacher, and former executive director of Minnesota Center for Book Arts. His fine art books are in collections throughout North America, including the J. Paul Getty Center, the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, and libraries at the University of Wisconsin, Yale, Harvard, Brown, UC-Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of Arizona. He teaches creative writing and the book arts for the University of Arizona’s Extended University program and for Pima Community College, and during the past summer was a faculty member at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He lives in Tucson with his spouse and frequent collaborator, the visual artist Cynthia Miller.
BIO: Sheila E. Murphy recently performed her poetry for Lit City in New Orleans. Last year, she presented a series of readings and workshops at the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh-Barton, Devon, in the UK, in addition to performing at the third annual Boston Poetry Conference. In 1999, she was a featured performer at the annual Brisbane Writers Festival in Queensland, Australia. Murphy has authored numerous books of poetry, most recently The Indelible Occasion (Potes & Poets Press, 2000). She and Beverly Carver co-founded the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series and served as coordinators for 12 years. The series continues under the direction of Carolyn Robbins, Curator of Education, at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts. In 1996, Murphy’s Letters to Unfinished J. won the New American Poetry Series Open Competition. The book is scheduled to appear from Sun & Moon Press.
