g r e g g    m u r r a y

When On Lookout How Careful To Be by the Noose

As
if 	        you,                          watching
                you
          cut
               the outer
          coat,
                              rifle arbitration that

   sends    the        hang-
                                man

       to a wing                     to rehearse

his     lines,                        to prepare
     to           pare,
                                             strike

                      the sentinel             who

broke
                                      the   sentence

           left            to parse—if


 insolvent, knotted

                         rope                    catching

 your                 garments,  you & if

             he,
            a
                               caddie of laws with


                       an etching

      of     the        orders,

                                                in hand has,

              string                him on up.

And if
not,        swing. Snap.

next

GREGG MURRAY is an assistant professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College, as well as the editor of Muse A Journal. He has recent poems in Josephine Quarterly, Caketrain, Sou'wester, DIAGRAM, Pank, New South, Birmingham Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly Review, RealPoetik, alice blue, Horse Less, Phantom Drift, decomP magazinE, Berkeley Poetry Review, Quiddity International, LEVELER, Free State Review, The Mondegreen, Spittoon, Menacing Hedge, Midway, interrupture, and elsewhere. Gregg also has a chapbook, Ceviche, from Spittoon Press.

in issue twelve

a l i c e   b l u e   t w e n t y - s e v e n

I S S N     1 5 5 9 - 6 5 6 7