Table Walking at Nighthawk
Carol Darnell Guerrero-Murphy
ISBN 0979625513
$13.95

Carol Darnell Guerrero-Murphy’s poetry pulls the threads of literature and memory into an intricate and thoughtful collection that looks both forward and back into an extraordinary mind.

“…a compellingly complex and lyrical world infused by
ancestral, mythic, and dearly familial voices that weave together the literary and the intimate.” –Kathryn Winograd

Sample poem

Limits of Memory, Anchorage, December 1969

He waved me over to the side of the road
behind his car. This was Alaska
before many of us knew to be careful
so I pulled over and rolled down my window.
In no time he sat in the driver’s seat,
a gun at my head, my head pinned to his lap.
He wanted some money, which I didn’t have.
He couldn’t figure out how to
get back out of my car and into his car.
So we drove.
My head wedged under the steering wheel
I promised him many things.
I noticed oily bits of potato chips.
I noticed glacier gravel on the floor mat by his big boots
and thought, “I should vacuum.”

The long night wore on. He let me up.
I saw the mountains as if they weren’t really there.
We discussed how to return him to his car
but at our first pass by the cops were looking it over.
He got out the second time around.

I arrived home late, shaky, dry-mouthed;
told my parents. I couldn’t remember anything
my parents might believe, not the color of his hair
or the shape of his eyes, not the make of his car.
Only the smell of his breath and the damp weight of his hands.
My father phoned around to discover
if any criminals or madmen had escaped.
They decided to let it drop.
It’s Christmas, my father said,
maybe he is worried about not having money for presents,
maybe he has children waiting at home.