Table Walking at Nighthawk

https://cozine.com/2009-october/table-walking-at-nighthawk/ Review in Colorado Central Magazine

Published by Ghost Road Press, 2007, this was a Women Writing the West (WILLA) poetry award finalist. Used copies available occasionally online. And directly from the author at cdgmurphy@gmail.com

Poetry. TABLE WALKING AT NIGHTHAWK’s poetry calls on literature and memory to create an intricate and thoughtful collection that looks forward and back into an extraordinary mind. That Guerrero-Murphy is a close and fervent reader is evidenced by the poems themselves, conjured from the richest parts of experience and language to create distinctive pleasures upon the page. “In TABLE WALKING AT NIGHTHAWK, I find a deep virtue unique in American poetry now, a virtue that is also a technique raised high: the Panoramic. Guerrero-Murphy understands, and loves, the sheer scale of Time as it is lived in dear increments, of Landscape as it is carefully traversed by fragile lives. This is redemptive writing, a joy to know”–Donald Revell. ” This] fine first collection creates a compellingly complex and lyrical world infused by ancestral, mythic, and dearly familial voices that weave together the literary and the intimate”–Kathryn Winograd.

Chained Dog Dreams (Title Poem, Finishing Line Press November 2019)

Does the chained dog try to break her chain, her collar,

test which breaks first, her windpipe or the steel?

Or does the chained dog wait,

barking hunger for chow kibble,

her thirst for clean water,

her longing for the person to return?

Is the chained dog saying in the short sharp yaps,

“I’m here     I’m here     I’m here?”

If she knew how, the chained dog would write a novel,

proving that her poetic freedom can never be chained,

describing life on a farm with puddles to lap,

pole fences to skinny under, gophers to dig for;

beyond the farm a rabbity fragrant forest.

The story breaks her heart when the facts show through.