Assistant Editor Toni Judnitch: The speaker of Dev Murphy’s hybrid piece “The Hoard” uses the words of literary figures to examine and reexamine love and desire, creating a hoard within the text itself, which she reshapes throughout the piece. The urgency generated by the breathless quality of the language demonstrates the tension between identity and yearning, how the hunger for something outside ourselves can take hold and transform us.
To listen to Dev Murphy read her piece, click below:
The Hoard
My therapist says Most artists are neurotic and I say I don’t want to be neurotic and he says The other end of the spectrum is a rock. Would you rather be a rock? // You call me a flying squirrel. I say you are a lion, a bull. // Barthes wrote I am the lover, I am the one who waits but what good does this do for the beloved? The beloved, who must mow the lawn and paint a picture of a cow and who wants you to get on with your life. // Lewis wrote Be a circle, touch me again but what good does this do for the sphere, who is a sphere? // I have not painted in weeks. I bring my shivering hands to the blank canvas, prop it up and then withdraw, prop it up and then withdraw. // Solomon wrote Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. And when it does not desire, I stand watch over it. I put an afghan over it while it sleeps to keep it warm. I do not leave the room. // You call me to a world in which not waiting is a form of waiting. To be the rock and the circle at the same time—this is what it means to be a sphere. // Lewis also wrote Do not love anything, not even an animal, and your heart will never be broken. // I would rather be a rock: irredeemable, casketed, and waiting on no one. But I am desirous all the time of you, all the time desirous to the point of waiting all day for you, while you are painting and mowing and making your dinner. My basil is wilting and my inbox is full, and when you come to me with seeds and soup and paper and invitations, I am a soundless edge—you are here!—and in your presence still I wait, wait, with nothing to show for myself but my love, with nothing to show for my love but my loving. Prop it up and then withdraw. // I do not know if you are in love with me, but if you are, you are in love with a dead squirrel. // Straight-faced and with tender paws I lay your gifts in a shoebox under my bed. There they calcify, they colden.
Dev Murphy’s writing and illustrations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Guardian, The Rupture, Arcturus Magazine, ANMLY, The Pinch, Empty Mirror, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Not Getting It Ages Like Wine, or a Mythos was a semifinalist in CutBank‘s 2020 chapbook contest and her flash essay “Traps” was nominated for Best of the Net 2020. She is a reader for CRAFT Literary. She lives in Pittsburgh with her cat, Nick.
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