Icarus Boys/something like unweaving/father as boy needing/conversations with god on his children
by KEESHAWN MURPHY
in Spring 2025
Jillian M Rock, “Untitled,” 2024
Icarus Boys
for Gregg with two Gs and Greg with one
for Jordan who is both baller and river in spirit
for Keshawn with the locs who calls me his twin
for Kirk with the single dimple he got from his mother
for Mikey with the Cheeto-red fingertips and tongue
for the boys named after or by their grandmas
for the Blythes who go by B
for the boys who don’t know sleep
for the boys who turn cloaked faces into another opal morning
for the boys whose puffy coats make them into mopey clouds
for the boys who left a body behind
for the boys whom the ground has been trying to push back home
for the boys with boys who pour offerings in their names
for the boys who carry the sun on their backs
for the boys who never tried to fly and learned to love
the brush of wings against their earth-bound feet.
Something Like Unweaving
We meet on a Thursday, my therapist and me. She’s draped in something handknit and green. I wonder if she made it herself or if her people are the kind to show their love through what their hands can do. Tell me about your week. It’s only our third meeting. I skip the hysterics of the honesty. I make her laugh about my chaotic boss who routinely nurses a stain sitting on his bleached white torso. How have you been handling the distance? I know she means from home, but I can’t help but think of the last person I kissed. He’s seven-hundred miles away, getting lost in the grit of New York and forgetting me. Are you still having the dreams? The nightmares? I don’t dodge. I tell her about the one where I’m nestling four brown eggs beneath my pillow. I tell her how I watch a snake fester itself into being. How it rattles its thin slick in my direction. As if to say it will make a meal of what I refuse to grow inside my body. How have you been feeling about your body? Do you still feel like it’s not yours? And she already knows my face when it’s thinking of a lie. So, I become a surge of truth: Once, I thought I was dying because I wouldn’t stop bleeding from places that don’t bleed easily. I started writing down passwords and account pins. I stashed notes for my sister behind books I knew she loved. I hoped by instinct she would shuffle them from their slots in my shelves just to see the pages I had marked. I realize how selfish that was. And how does that inform how you feel about your body? I tell her how tired I am. How truly tired I am of being told the latticework of my interior will always be more impressive than the rest of me. How maybe I’m beginning to believe it. How I feel like I’m losing. How all at once, all I want is to sit seamless into someone’s arms. How I’m ashamed that I miss being looked at like something good. Like some thing. Like some thing someone might want to lay next to. Or underneath. Or right on top. Or maybe deep inside. How lately I have no more fight. How lately I have been more womb than woman.
Father as Boy Needing
a bouquet of breath.
a final chance
for her to wake
the way a mother would
if she felt the force
of her children
hovering, buffering.
felt their bodies
just above her
within reach
waiting for her
to witness them
alive once more.
you spill past and
take the last of her tether
to this earth with you.
and that is when i hear it
right where i sit
a crack so fine and deep.
not the chariot
closing its final door
but my chest breaking
clean open
emptying itself
making space
building a room
for all your sorrow
to crawl right in.
we enter with less
my siblings and i.
brother: a captain
leading despite defeat
through somber waters.
sister behind: a soft landing
for when the grief sweeps our feet.
i find you:
a quiet sinking
closest to the pulpit
and oh god
the mirror we make—
you too, flanked by blood.
three brown headed
kin fixed in a row
before a casket:
a blushing pink chariot
fresh to bloom
—it was her favorite color.
the three of you:
a swaying bayou
in an eerie
kind of unison.
the final viewing:
a face too much like your own.
you release
Conversations with God on His Children
How come it seem we can’t die slowly?
How come you let that demon touch what you made?
How come we return just shy of what you made?
How come our skin part easy like the red sea?
How come our blood don’t flood back like a red sea?
How come when we call you can’t hear?
How come when we call you can’t hear?
How come we can’t three day revival too?
How come you don’t come down like you used to?
They kill us like they need us to die better
than the last time. Like they breathe better
air than we do. How come they human kind?
How come our human ain’t the same kind?
How come you don’t call us back slowly?
KeeShawn Murphy is a writer and academic from Southeast D.C. She holds a B.A. from Lafayette College. Previously an English teacher at Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts, she is currently in the second year of her MFA program at the University of Kentucky. Her writing focuses on the complicated intersections of black womanhood, spirituality, and familial relationships.
