By Emily Murphy

“We saw a man eat pie for breakfast this morning.

Still, nothing happened.

Lots of unusual things occur and nothing happens.” The Evening Herald, Ottawa, Kansas, 9 June, 1904

1.

Pigeons lined the cornstalks again

fenceposts gray & wobbling in the breeze late June & ragged lawn.

Clover came in thick last month now dots

like the towering clouds billow shade purple & pink blush

on spare trees & ripening fields & red-roof toyota

wedding ring tapping on driver's door

storm feathering the radio & rendered

in chorus crackling with scattered gravel.

Single plate of sheet glass in the sunglare like an icon

on brick like swollen fruit mounted & in the sweat

cool still air carpet like piled wool—two footprints

down to floorboards molded & compressor kicks to life

with ptang of gravel shot. A few dozen smudges of gray & white

against dark clouds illumined like shadows

stretched to asphalt shoulder grow deeper until

as though striking flint from a spent lighter

fireflies embellish the corn dark as

wet earth on a warm night & there is no wind only

wake & watery music. Some miles ahead

lightning & rainfall polish pine needles to emerald glow.

2.

where chainlink fence grew into an apple tree

the wind wedged wrappers into wire

& what once was yellow now snaps

the air not quite still only

live más & pottery jagged coyote cast rippling shade

scars like old footsteps polished away the grass

five summers now & still the level dirt

broken only by anthills & roots like a running river

Emily Murphy is a poet living and writing in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Manzano Mountain Review, Inklette, and Garbanzo, as well as a very talented pigeon delivering hand-rolled poems to upper story apartments. You can follow her on Twitter @weightsandmeans.