DEVAN MURPHY / A WHEEL SLOWLY CATCHING FIRE

August 05, 2025  /  Always Crashing

 
 
 

Attempt:

You have to give your body to something. You have to choose what takes your body. The starlight, the sea. A tyrant. A self, a team. A mission, which, grown as big as anyone can make it, makes you hate the mission. A burning bush. The body burns, just like that bush. The body speaks. My body is not like a church: I wish it were God. It is a wheel slowly catching fire.


Revision:

My body burns, just like that bush. The body—my body—full of tables on their sides. Legs fill in the flesh of my arms, my legs—my tyrants. Without this anger, who am I? My body is not a church, and I don’t wish I was God. My body is a row of numbers, out of order, becoming smaller as they go.


Revision:

You want your body to do something. Want the table to be set. Want every stranger to have feathers. You want to be thought good, good. You are not.

Scraps:

You have to give your body to something. You have to choose what takes your body. The starlight, the sea. A tyrant. A self, a team. A mission, which, grown as big as anyone can make it, makes you hate the mission. A burning bush. The body burns, just like that bush. The body speaks. My body is not like a church. I wish it were God. It is a wheel slowly catching fire.


Scraps:

My body burns, just like that bush. The body—my body—full of tables on their sides. Legs fill in the flesh of my arms, my legs—my tyrants. Without this anger, who am I? My body is not a church, and I don’t wish I was God. My body is a row of numbers, out of order, becoming smaller as they go.


Scraps:

You want your body to do something. Want the table to be set. Want every stranger to have feathers. You want to be thought good, good. You are, you are.

 

Devan Murphy is the author of the chapbook I’m not I’m not I’m not a baby (Ethel 2024), a collection of prose poems and essays and abstract comics about God and loneliness. Her writing and illustrations have appeared or are forthcoming in Electric Literature, Astrolabe, -ette, Brink, The Iowa Review, The Guardian, Diagram, and elsewhere. You can find her online at devmurphy.club or on Instagram @gytrashh.