Getaway Reads: Grand Fugue by Peter E. Murphy

 

This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Kendal Lambert that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty.

 

Grand Fugue

by Peter E. Murphy

After the hospital released me with a warning,
I walked around this busy city that hadn’t noticed
I’d been missing, me and my reconstructed heart,
so full of gratitude I wanted to kiss every light
that flashed GO, forgive the ones that said STOP.
And when I felt the earth throb under my feet
I remembered the subway below where commuters
were training themselves to work and what it felt
like to be that useful, which I will never be again
until my living will kicks in and a young doctor-to-be
pulls out my organs, examines them, and puts them back,
leaving one out to see if anyone notices, the way I did
in boot camp after taking an ancient carbine apart,
getting busted, threatened with court martial and firing
squad and Vietnam. The sun is working overtime,
shimmying its vitamin D all over the city. Its light
reflects off the granite walls of a magnificent building
whose cornerstone says it was born in 1844,
the year nitrous oxide was first used to sweeten pain,
though too late for Beethoven, who, enraged after
becoming deaf, drove the audience mad when he came
up with his fifteen minute car crash, the “Grosse Fugue,”
where the violin and the two violas and the cello
rip their bows across the screaming catgut
so atonally, no one wanted to listen to it.
Wouldn’t his heart break from joy if a patron set him up
at Weeki Wachee to watch through the great glass wall,
mermaids breathing underwater from air hoses so obvious
you can’t see them? His whole universe would shimmer
as waterproof women swirl through the bubbles
of the sunlit spring, smiling at him, waving their colorful
spandex tails like batons. In my anesthetic dreams,
I too breathe underwater without drowning.
I flap my arms, kick my feet, try not to remember
how blood spilling out of the body congeals
on the hospital sheets so a minimum wage worker
in the basement laundry can put a whopper and fries
on her kid’s dinner plate. There are a million birds
in this city I hadn’t heard till now, each of them tuning
their instruments, each of them singing, I am alive.

© Peter E. Murphy. Originally published in Rattle, 2014.

 

+ + + + + + + + + +

Peter E. Murphy was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where he operated heavy equipment, managed a nightclub and drove a cab. He is the author of Stubborn Child, a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize, and three poetry chapbooks, Thorough & Efficient, Mr. Nobody and Atlantic City Lives (Forthcoming in 2015). His unique poetry writing assignments have been collected in Challenges for the Delusional. He has received fellowships for writing and teaching from The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Yaddo and the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. Peter is the founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University which includes the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway and other programs for poets, writers and teachers in the U.S. and abroad. Read a recent interview with Peter.

+ + + + + + + + + +

Want to study with Peter E. Murphy? Peter will be facilitating the poetry workshops at the 2016 Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway.

+ + + + + + + + + +

Our Participants Say It Best

“Many participants have been attending for years and within a day I realized why: the community is so warm and friendly. Peter is a dream host. The poetry workshops are challenging and rigorous yet lack intimidation. It’s a blend that’s magic.”
~ Caits, New York, NY –  More testimonials

Our Philosophy

Escape the distractions of your busy life. Advance your craft and energize your writing with a challenging and supportive Writing Getaway. Join us at one of our upcoming writing retreats and take advantage of plentiful writing time, insightful feedback, good meals and good company. Get Away to Write.
View our upcoming programs

+ + + + + + + + + +