A finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, Shoreditch by Miguel Murphy is published by Barrow Street Press. The editor is Peter Covino. The winner will be announced on May 11. Here is a poem from this collection:

Hamlet

You’re worthless,
a leafy performance.
Orgasm, wasted on a mirror—
Your fear is

a white skull
atop a red
encyclopedia.
The laughter of the interior

experience, “To Thine Own
Self” etcetera.
Your inked ornate
script in Old English

like scaffolding
veined near
a wholesome
areola—Sweet

Jailbait, preening at the gym
another year won’t
erase it.
You tug your dick and yawn,

trying to maintain.
Nothing,
pageantry. You’re empty.
The error’s

your self-loathing’s
incomplete—
Horror, Flowers, Pleasure.
Black Halls.

You’ll live forever. You’ll turn
auto-immune.
Bubonic, venereal,
green

moil of the groin. Like
a tree branch
in summer
trying to shake off

summer—
You’ll learn
the songs that
wither.

“Hamlet” from Shoreditch, © 2021 by Miguel Murphy. Reprinted with permission of Barrow Street Press. All rights reserved.