Murphy, by Barbara Jeffress

Wriggle Room, Murphy, NC, by Tema Stauffer (USA) 2024. Image provided by the artist. Click on image for artist site.

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Murphy
Wriggle Room, Murphy, NC, by Tema Stauffer (USA) 2024

I wish they’d called it Marley,
so every little thing could be alright,
O misspelled, accidental patron
saint of misfortune. Rust won’t stop
licking the paint off the roof, and all
the gingerbread house wisecracks
in the world won’t keep out the cold.
Wrong comes and goes; and nobody
spilled any bread crumbs to lead us out
of this story, back when they wandered
up here to sing the song of themselves,
proud chins tilted to the heavens.

Nowadays, we gussy things up however
we can, hanging glass orbs like candy,
filling the oven with pies, tacking empty
pans along the eaves like trophies
to steal some sun. The wildflowers
have grown so leggy they creep right
up to the house, with names like fairies,
or wicked stepsisters: O Jewelweed!
O Goldenrod! Under their spell, I tangle
the walls with stenciled tendrils,
shadows of my hide-and-seek heart.

I wish I could consult the stars,
but they are pinned to the night.
Startled butterflies. Worms, wriggling
on the hook of how a man’s hands
can craft a bewitching stag, or hold
a gun. O cheerful ancestors, the truth
is a hungry, heavy heirloom. You could
have been good neighbours, summoning
the Cherokee to a potluck supper instead
of a death march: Call it karma,
or kudzu, it eats away at me.

Barb Jeffress

Barb Jeffress doesn't mind that she can never quite pull herself together. She loves the way art cracks us open to each other and to the world, and finds poetry an irresistible conversation. An educator, musician, and member of three book clubs, Barb lives in the mountains of East Tennessee where she has become unreasonably fond of the banjo. Recent poems are forthcoming in The Vagabond's Verse and the Tennessee Voices 2025-2026 anthology.