Long Story Short

Long Story Short

By G. E. Murray
One marriage, three children, the usual hero-to-hump tale   
of jobs in alternating altitudes, stories of unrequited joy.   
Fresh identities, dramas unseen. Too much of dawn
going dark, making for a rich meal of dread, when contemplating   
love above the brim.

You also should talk about dealings with heavy weather   
and one-night agonies, as if descending permanently   
into a single distinction. It boils to skin
and plain whim, or any fabrication sufficient
to implicate the act.

Just then, something glimpsed from a taxi careening   
through Paris, afterimages of a lost father’s face   
becomes a tree in the park, tall, rustling with allusions,   
or was it simply cool air stealing across your face—
that isolation again?

G. E. Murray, “Long Story Short” from Arts of a Cold Sun. Copyright © 2003 by G. E. Murray. Used with the permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.

Source: Arts of a Cold Sun (University of Illinois Press, 2003)

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Poet G. E. Murray

POET’S REGION U.S., Midwestern

Subjects Midlife, Living, Disappointment & Failure

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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SUBJECT Midlife, Living, Disappointment & Failure

POET’S REGION U.S., Midwestern

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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