Aravaipa Canyon
Walls tower. The squeezed
water rushes. Coatimundi
click up cliffs, their ringed
tails bouncing. After five miles
we set up camp between mouths,
kiss under cottonwoods. It’s three-ish,
the desert’s highest hour.
One lone yellow warbler.
Then, such whooping!
We scramble through
alders and willows to see
one smallish swim hole,
two boys, two men, whose
pistols in hike-holsters
suggest they might shoot
mountain lion, black bear,
bighorn sheep, or tent thief?
We hesitate, they whoop.
Jim Beam in flasks.
Burning skin. Paunches.
Then their skinny arms wave,
point to one high overhang.
They cajole. So we climb.
Check for loach minnows.
We jump. Splashing through
the dark green algae of delight.
South Mountain Park
When we moved to the mountain I expected
javelina eating the rhododendrons, knocking
over trash cans. I imagined the park as an ocean.
Our “waterfront” property: sea of creosote, saguaro.
But every day the cars commence their rushing.
City trucks, delivery vans, SUV’s, sedans,
backhoes, RV’s, and motorcycles.
In the park pretend I am a boat dipping, rolling
away from homes and roads and anything
produced or sold. But back at our lot the traffic
is spilling, surging, dumping:
the black Lexus, the blue minivan,
the yellow bus.
Patricia Colleen Murphy was named winner of the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, which was selected by Press 53 poetry series editor Tom Lombardo. Murphy is the founder of Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, and American Poetry Review, and has received awards from Gulf Coast and Bellevue Literary Review, among others.