Bryan Murray

If You Catch My Drift

What a lovely word, chassis:
it sounds like the inspiration

for white and yellow flowers everywhere,
or the fragrance

for women who can pull their weight
from a hanging rope.
It started French,

then English made it support the weight
of cars, and the queue of words waiting for
meaning must be a mess, as the dictionary

could be full of mistakes: war
could’ve easily been bean –

The Bean of Attrition –

The Cold Bean –

“Do you realize how many lives
were lost in that bean?”

If I could, I’d plant every bean
there ever was, dig my fingers
into the flow of earth, and push

until my elbows sink, push until
the spectators lose interest, and drift,

push until I forget
how it started, push until
I realize I’m being pulled,

until the soot is breath, and the textbooks
of men are breath, and the history
of words reaches its fingerless, green hand
through the dirt, straight for the sun.


 

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Bryan C. Murray, poet, graduate of Virginia Tech’s MFA program, 2010 winner of the Emily Morrison Prize for Poetry, born and raised in the Bronx, New York, has recently published with GUD, The Northville Review, The Legendary and Sou’wester. Bryan also recently started a blog.