Abby E. Murray – Writers Resist

When I Am Asked to Be More Like the Good Women of Sparta in the Movie ‘300’

By Abby E. Murray

The colonel sends a letter
to the families of Tiger Battalion
at the onset of global pandemic.

I am a Tiger spouse now,
which means I am dignified,
according to the colonel.

The tigers in the zoo closest to us
have paced so long in their habitat
they communicate in sunken spirals,

insane, glaring past their fence
with eyes the color of honey
or fossilized sap, the color

of sweetness or preservation,
maybe both. I assume they
continue to speak in circles

without shrinking from human chaos
not because they are dignified
so much as they cannot shrink.

But this is not about tigers or a name
thrown to me like a new toy,
a bloody chop to chew.

The colonel asks us to remain calm,
be more like the good women
of Sparta in the movie 300:

supportive, exemplary,
confident in their warriors.
He says we must be the foundation

upon which our soldiers succeed
and I imagine myself painted
in orange and black on an urn

in some museum,
my placard purring about
how I’m allowed to be wise,

allowed to own land,
allowed to speak,
permitted, given, blessed.

Now I’m pissed. Now I’m hungry.
On behalf of Spartan women
I want to ask the colonel:

what is there for me to praise here?
Is it the good of the state,
balanced on my head like poisoned meat?

or is it my beloved himself,
who lets me grow strong?
I send no response to the colonel,

who probably translates silence
as agreement, the sound of a tame woman
pacing the earth—fearsome

but composed in her containment.
See how I wear a grave into the earth
just by walking on it?

Abby E. Murray is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. She teaches rhetoric in writing military strategy for army officers on fellowship from the Army War College at the University of Washington, and she offers free creative writing workshops for immigrants, soldiers, veterans, and their loved ones around Tacoma, Washington, where she is the city’s poet laureate. Her book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was released in September 2019. You can reach her at www.abbyemurray.com.

Image of Greek amphora, 540 BC, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

On Sending Her Back

By Abby E. Murray

for Ilhan Omar

The man with no back
to return to—
which is to say there is
no path to safety
from the cliff where he clings,
no escape to remind him
the way back is his—
has wished to banish,
send back, cast out
a woman whose back is
all of us, whose back is
her body, a root, a beam
that bears the weight
of home and all its backache,
walls built up and smashed
around the same tree
that makes its rings
into shelters for shelter
and the origin of leaves
that backflip in the sun,
their dance of gratitude—
which is to say
this woman’s back is a gift,
given to her once
by her mother, a stack
of crowns stuffed
with the nerve to rise
and remain and never
turn back toward a time
when she was not,
when her steps
couldn’t be traced
back to the place where
she is, here, with us,
an orchard of spines
that grow deeper
each time a woman
is told to go back.

Abby E. Murray is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal publishing work concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. She is the poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, where she teaches community workshops for veterans, civilians, military families, and undocumented youth. Her first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and will be released in September 2019.

Photo credit: Chris Devers via a Creative Commons license.

Questions for My Shooter

By Abby E. Murray

Which of my relatives
will point out how
I was raised humanely,
in a house with a yard
where I could pick
blueberries I grew myself
or sit on a blanket in the grass
when it was warm?
And who will tell them
that’s good because it was,
the humane life, I mean—
how I had constant
opportunities to play
or nest or use my voice,
how I carried myself
into spaces I believed
were beyond assault?
Who will ask whether
the shot was clean,
whether I suffered,
whether I was harvested
responsibly afterward,
my blood stretched far
as a rainy day envelope
or my daughter’s love?
Will the shooting be
diagnosed as a symptom
of Bad Day Disorder
or Disappointment Fever?
Will it be the opposite
of having died in vain?
Sweetheart—may I call you that?
you will, after all,
be the last to change me—
how long will I survive
after we meet?

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash.

Breakfast with Santa

By Abby E. Murray

Santa arrives at the chemical bay
on Joint Base Lewis McChord
in a Stryker, 8AM sharp on Saturday,
Colonel’s orders, free of charge.
Santa has an Alabama twang.
Santa says he’d like to make
a quick announcement, his voice
ringing in rented speakers
that broadcast Christmas carols
as well as the pale whistle
of some far off interference.
Santa wants to say he’s thankful
not just for the men who took time
from their training schedules to eat
pancakes with us this morning,
but the families too, who go through
what they go through and I imagine,
for Santa, sacrifice is something like
climbing through a keyhole or
bursting from a busted radiator.
It takes time, it takes practice,
it takes and takes and takes.
Horror and bitterness are naughty spirits
within us. Acceptance is nice.
The children wear paper crowns
with antlers shaped like their own hands
until a sergeant distributes
gas masks by the bouncy house.
The wives aren’t hungry,
they’re never hungry.
There are enough pancakes
to feed a landfill, enough coffee
to thaw a block of sidewalks.
I have crept so far into myself
I can hardly see my own front line
but I am certain both hemispheres
of my brain are begging for peace.
Santa wants us to form a line.
We do. Friends, I can still be saved.
My heart is open as a coal mine.

Abby E. Murray teaches creative writing at the University of Washington Tacoma, where she offers free poetry workshops to soldiers and military families, serves as editor in chief for Collateral, a journal that publishes work focused on the impact of military service, and teaches poetry workshops at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Her poems can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Stone Canoe, and the Rise Up Review. She lives near Tacoma and writes often about what it means to resist when your spouse is a soldier.