Selected Work

        by Leslie McMurtry









        Marie Would Approve


        (inspired by a visit to Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, London)

        She would approve,
        the circus-like corridors
        jammed with shouting pilgrims,
        more boisterous, more awed
        than churches to Rome.
        They touch and shove, snapping
        up celebrity with the modern
        convenience, photography.
        She is content to watch over in a quiet corner.

        Sleeping Beauty as mysterious
        and alluring as a banker's dream,
        heart pumping nonexistent blood,
        haunts from her recumbent
        position, older still in eternal youth.

        Burying Hamlet


        I.
        Who, then, cloth-wraps the bodies
        Accompanies them to the open tombs?
        Cleans the bloodstains from the hall,
        who remains
        once Horatio dies in quiet sleep?

        II.
        Give me reason not to fear
        the undiscovered country, Hamlet--
        I feel as Philip Larkin does,
        and that's of little comfort.

        I imagine
        Hamlet looking in life as some moody,
        dark-eyed prince,
        more vampire than Dane.
        No bottle-blond
        Olivier for me--my
        dark Hamlet walks Elsinore,
        eyes fringed in lashes, he's pale
        as Yorick's dust-bit skull.

        Give me cause to earn your peace,
        Hamlet, this lesson that you learned.

        III.
        Graves lost in quiet earth;
        what old man can now tell
        where they are buried?
        Yet Hamlet will outlive me--
        outlive me by ghostly years.

        What They Should Have

          for the MA creative writing students, 2006-7

        Would that my love
        could purchase for them
        cream cakes,
        sturdy Thermos mugs
        doused high

        with strong, black coffee;
        pitchers of milk,

        mounds of sugar packets,
        faded pink. Vats of beer,
        as that's how they drink
        it, stunning gold or
        Guinness ebonied over.

        Soft beds, radiators, unlimited
        phone credit, an expense
        account at Waterstones.
        Dylan's legacy,
        and the other Dylan, too.
        Cold medicine, paper and cursors,

        pens as numerous as grass.
        Sunny days and dog days,
        drizzle, don'-wanna-get-out-of-bed days.
        Klimt posters, Modigliani,
        Victoria Wood. Chocolate-dipped
        Gooseberries. Bus passes,

        ding-proof glasses, hiking boots,
        libraries, first class on the train.
        Croissants, designer sunglasses,
        underwear that someone will see

        and admire. A hilltop,
        a stone's throw from the sea,
        a shell whispering them to sleep.

        Buses

        The recognition: rituals, flashing a pass
        like working for the FBI. Would one
        pause in the mechanisms of a hulking
        stop--start--on--off. Men are like buses?

        Drunks, nervous low-income, blue scrubs,
        Del Norte lean-like-a-chola, white I am,
        to the very core. The half shout of

        a destination. No one leaves. Faces.

        Leslie McMurtry is a native of Albuquerque, NM, and recently received her MA in creative writing from Swansea University in Wales. She has been published in Borderlines, Swansea Life, Scribendi and has contributed and edited various literary magazines. Her great ambition is to write for radio.(August 08, September 09)