Matthew Murrey

May 23, 2024

“Tracks” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Night Train by Gerrie Paino, train car deserted at night with stars in background

Image: “Night Train” by Gerrie Paino. “Tracks” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Matthew Murrey

TRACKS

after Tomas Tranströmer

It is the last night—
stars, moonlight, thin clouds—
and I am sad nothing
remains but the baggage car
 
where I packed myself
still crying and holding on
to my mother’s soft skirt
the second day of school,
 
where I stowed my sister and I
watching a black and white
movie on TV until our father
says “Turn that off.”
 
My first time seeing you
is in there, along with a pair
of shoes, a funeral, a bed
on the floor, and two horizons.
 
What a noon it was when
the whole train was on its way
across rivers and fields heading
toward mountains and the sea.
 
I was looking forward to far
more, but this will have to do:
bright moonlight, leafless trees,
stars forever out of reach.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2024, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Gerrie Paino: “The evening I came upon the solitary train car that is the subject of my Ekphrastic Challenge photograph, I felt a sense of fascination and mystery. What stories would that deteriorating hulk tell, should it be given a voice? The opportunity to have so many talented poets share their answers was both a delight and a challenge, but, ultimately, I kept returning to ‘Tracks,’ as the one that felt absolutely right. ‘It is the last night,’ begins this poem, begging the question, ‘Last night for what?’ From that point on, we are offered deftly-rendered fragments of memory which include a ‘mother’s soft skirt’ being clutched by a child afraid to go to school, a gruff father, and, most striking to me, ‘… a pair / of shoes, a funeral, a bed / on the floor, and two horizons.’ The final stanza, with its sense of longing and resignation, seems to summarize everything that might be contained in that deteriorating behemoth as it crumbles, inexorably, beneath ‘stars forever out of reach.’”

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May 23, 2019

“In the Nostalgia Chair” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2019: Artist’s Choice

 

Kandinsky's Slippers by Denise Zygadlo

Image: “Kandinsky’s Slippers” by Denise Zygadlo. “In the Nostalgia Chair” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2019, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Matthew Murrey

IN THE NOSTALGIA CHAIR

I unfold Florida
days when I had my first
apartment, when I plugged in
a second-hand record player
and listened to my life.
It was small town, good
walking in the waking
morning while the sun
reinvented the horizon,
good night strolls
where stars kept track
above wires leaves and moss
and churches were dark
empty, unlocked, and holy.
We had some times:
that night of wine, that morning
of coffee and rain. One time
we smoked and couldn’t stop
laughing after we’d stared
at each other until you said
“I’m not feeling it.”
And when I was alone
and holy, nights were for falling,
Look Homeward Angel, asleep.
That was a different state,
a thousand novels ago. It’s a lie
to say I never looked back.
I still think about Keith Jarett
and the radio in the kitchen
and a bridge over a brown river
and a red-brick train station
and an afternoon of blue
thunder and broken branches.
Remember how the blinds
divvied up beauty on the wall
near the end of so many days,
and how green the world was
when we opened them? They
have fallen apart, like lovers,
like the loafers I wore when you left,
the ones, I’m sorry to say,
I threw away a long time ago.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2019, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Denise Zygadlo: “I found this poem very evocative; it created an atmosphere I felt went well with the image and took us beyond it into another world. The poet beckons us into his past and shares those important moments that lodge in his memory, without giving too much away, so that we find ourselves sitting in that deckchair reflecting with the sitter and composing our own pictures. In my collage it was Kandinsky, but it could be anyone transporting us into a world of nostalgia. I love that it summoned up such a rich love story for the poet, whilst retaining the essential elements of the image; the blinds, the loafers and the sense of a Florida landscape amongst palm trees. I also have a past with Keith Jarett records and liked how the allusions at the beginning of the poem were picked up at the end. Very lovely, well done Mr. Murrey, thank you.”

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September 20, 2018

“That Bit Me” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2018: Artist’s Choice

 

Waiting by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Image: “Waiting” by Alexis Rhone Fancher. “That Bit Me” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2018, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Matthew Murrey

THAT BIT ME

The sex is only good if we’re totally fucked up.
It blurs how wrong we are for each other.
—Alexis Rhone Fancher

It’s all a blur
how we wound up
this morning two spoons,
hand in glove, glass
full half, full empty.
Who was smooth
porter, creamy
stout, and who sweet-
strong Barbados rum?

Come, don’t pretend you
don’t remember taking me
home saying God,
you look like you
could stand a little
something to eat (I did)

and drink (we did).
We tipped many
and found ourselves lips
on lips, unbuttoned and undone.
I don’t remember you
regretting a thing. So don’t

toss that look, Lenny,
as if I’m just any stranger
strolling this joint. You
aren’t fooling anybody,
this body. Now lean in
and let me know where

and when we’ll hook up
again, then fill me
a glass of something light
tonight: a pilsner
or lager—hair
of the dog that bit me.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2018, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Alexis Rhone Fancher: “So many terrific poems, inspired by my shot of the waitress and busboy at The Artisan House restaurant in DTLA, a restaurant that, sadly, no longer exists. I had a hard time choosing the winner, but I kept going back to Matthew Murrey’s tongue-in-cheek poem that riffed on a line in a poem of mine. Oh, that’s clever! I thought as I began reading the poem, prepared to be underwhelmed. But the poem delivered. It caught the just-perceptible despair in the slump of the server’s shoulders, juxtaposed with the late night bravado that’s the stock in trade of the successful cocktail waitress. I should know. I was one.”

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May 6, 2018

“Pig Brain” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Matthew Murrey

PIG BRAIN

Kept alive. Thoughtless.
What if it was thinking?
In the thirties, under Stalin,
dogs’ severed heads were vivified—
swallowed, blinked, flinched.
So what is black and white,
and what is gray? Pigs
are raised without sun or wind,
except on the way to slaughter.
There was a pig’s brain
removed from the stall of its skull
and bathed in a concoction
of warm and artificial blood.
Thirty-six hours they kept it
from death. That’s a start.
Dog to pig to whom? And what
is the life span of pity?
In English we call, thoughtless,
the worst among us pigs.

—from Poets Respond

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Matthew Murrey: “A week ago I saw an article on the BBC describing how scientists at MIT were able to keep the brains of pigs alive ‘using a system of pumps, heaters, and bags of artificial blood.'” (web)

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March 30, 2017

“Threading North and South” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2017: Editor’s Choice

 

Hwy 41 by Debbie McAfee

Image: “Hwy 41” by Debbie McAfee. “Threading North and South” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice winner.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Matthew Murrey

THREADING NORTH AND SOUTH

31 frayed my nerves pulling
over in the middle of nowhere
Michigan every thirty miles to pour
water into the hot, leaky radiator.

45 took us south into ninety degrees
of July and a battlefield nearby
before we slipped like wounded
ghosts into Mississippi for the night.

17 was awfully pretty skirting
the river as it wound its way
from the city where I grew up
to my first home away from home.
And I never moved back.

In my twenties I headed north
and I’ll never forget my first trip
south on 41 with the oceanic
lake to my left and the giant teeth
of sky scrapers ahead. I grinned
like a kid seeing mountains
or snow for the first time.

I love the blocked, black
numbers on white shields;
they conjure up slowing down—
tobacco sheds, red bricks, a river,
a bean field, intersections and signs:
Open, Closed, Vacancy.

Sometimes it’s fences to the west,
or waking up to see what the clouds
are up to and how many miles are left.
Sometimes it’s speeding to get there
before nightfall, and hoping—that dark
or not—the lights will be on as they should be.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2017
Editor’s Choice

[download audio]

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Comment from the editor on this selection: “A road trip embroidery deserves a road trip poem, and Matthew Murrey delivered the mood—the lonely, dull, excited, monotony of highway travel. I also appreciated how the thread metaphor only appears in the title, giving the poem an extra unspoken layer to ponder.”

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December 19, 2015

“Map to the Moon” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2015: Artist’s Choice

 

Photograph by Meghan Tutolo
Painting by Meghan Tutolo. “Map to the Moon” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2015, and selected by Tutolo as the Artist’s Choice winner.

[download broadside]

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Matthew Murrey

MAP TO THE MOON

That is the dream I had
when I was stuck in that little town,
wishfully watching planes in the sky,
thumbing the atlas all the time.

I dreamed I’d go to the purple
city and find you. I believed
that lights would turn on
in the tall buildings to welcome me.

And I did go,
though I took an overnight train
that rolled in after sunrise and took me
past the stadium and brick warehouses
and apartments with shades drawn.

And there was a river
and a bridge, and at night a yellow
brilliance at the center which I wanted
as a moth wants the light
it flings itself at over and over.
And you were there,
which is why memory paints it
so lovely, so purple, so speckled—
even prettier than it really was—

and tells a little lie about how young
the moon was, when everybody
knows it’s older than dirt
and that love is the youngster.
That was decades ago,
but I remember falling
like it was yesterday. So yes,
the night and moon were young,
and my heart waxed full.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2015
Artist’s Choice Winner

[download audio]

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Comment from the artist, Meghan Tutolo: “It’s simple, but so honest. I like that. I like that it doesn’t have to try to reach me, true romance.” (website)

For more information on Matthew Murrey, visit his website.

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June 19, 2015

“Teeny Tiny” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2015: Artist’s Choice

 

Painting by Åsa Antalffy Eriksson

[download broadside]

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Matthew Murrey

TEENY TINY

It took forever for the light
to fade. All my manhood,
that old overcoat, was gone,
and I was no more than five
setting off through the forest.

They say in a vacuum a feather
falls like a stone. They say
you see your life pass before you
when you’re at death’s door.
They say jawbone walk
and jawbone talk. They say
things I’ll never understand.

I remember a story of a tiny boy
and his two older brothers lost
in the woods. They found shelter
for a night in the house of a stranger
who kept sharpening a long knife,
who kept calling up to the loft,
“Who is awake, and who is asleep?”

I couldn’t stay awake forever.
Even here the feather finally lands
on the needled path, the heart
has a weight all its own,
and every step I take erases me
just a little more. See,
you can barely see me.
What I’m trying to tell you is
it wasn’t a light at the end of a tunnel,
and it wasn’t as scary as the scrape
of a knife being readied on a stone.
Then again, it wasn’t a walk in the park either.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2015
Artist’s Choice Winner

[download audio]

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Comment from the painter, Åsa Antalffy Eriksson, on her selection: “This was hard. As I read through the poems, I thought it would be impossible to select a winner. Then I read them again, and again, and forced myself to drop one after the other. Quite a few of the poems made me cry—many had written about a child lost, and some of those pieces were almost too much to bear: well-written, deeply touching and evoking one of my greatest fears as a mother. Yet, I did not choose any of them for a winner. In the end, the poem I could not drop was Matthew Murrey’s ‘Teeny Tiny.’ It has a good flow and not a single weak line. It balances perfectly between narration and suggestion, presenting a sombre theme with a sort of casualness that appeals to me no end. ‘Teeny Tiny’ echoes the atmosphere and the imagery of my painting faithfully, but also adds something completely new and unexpected.” (website)

Note: This poem has been published exclusively online as part of our quarterly Ekphrastic Challenge, in which we ask poets to respond to an image provided by a selected artist. This May, the image was a painting by Åsa Antalffy Eriksson. We received 187 entries, and the artist and Rattle‘s editor each chose their favorite. Timothy Green’s choice will be posted next Friday. For more information on the Ekphrastic Challenge visit its page. See other poets’ responses or post your own by joining our Facebook group.

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