MW Murphy: #MeToo Series

there in the grass

almost burnt cigarette nub tight between thin fingers

she sits in the back seat of the cruiser…

yellowing grasses still flattened by his taking of her

and a braided elastic torn from her ponytail

hangs lopsided on a tall stem of orleander plant…

shaking her hair she feels a few pieces of dry weeds

matted there with the mud

her throat still aches from muscled gripping fingers

she will never be able to wear a high collar

or choker necklace

again…

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MW Murphy is a poet and novelist. She is the author of the novel Second Daughter, which was selected by NPR’s Faith Middleton as a “shelf-tracker” book of the month, and was also a featured book at R J Julia Booksellers. MW was selected for publication in the “Open Weave” poetry anthology published by Curbstone Press / Northwestern University, which also awarded her first place in its Poet Laureate Division. She has a short piece of fiction in the anthology Gathered Light published by Three O’ Clock Press in May 2013. MW also has poems in the international poetry anthology series “The Art of Being Human - Volume 13, Volume 14, and Volume 15”, all of which were published in 2015, and a short story in the anthology A Shadow Map published in 2017. MW is currently nearing completion of her urban sci/fi fantasy novel The Girl in the Bookstore which takes place mostly in Manhattan’s East Village.