Chris Murray

I. Neon signs pass as moonlight here, a promise: the world is still beautiful. II. I remember the night I tried to replace my ribcage with yours, trying to find beautiful in my time- bomb body. [...]

Identities take up space: headspace, emotional space, social space, and even physical space. Assigned female at birth, I quickly realized that I was “supposed to” take up less space than my [...]

I want to write love poems to my own body. So I’ve started taking the ones I wrote for you and replacing every “you” with “I.” Now I know I too love the taste of the ocean and I will grow like [...]

I am the type of person that reads landscapes like they are love poems and criticizes them for not being beautiful enough. I grew up in a city surrounded by trees, had to find beautiful behind [...]

As the New Year roles around all of us face the inevitable task of looking back at everything that has happened in the past year. We find ourselves desperately cataloging everything good that has [...]

The world will bloody your knuckles without even trying. If you cry in front of the women you love, they will still love you. Strong does not mean: tall loud angry. Strong means swallowing the [...]

I’ve been asked on more than one occasion if poetry is a means of escape or expression. My answer is always the same: why does it have to be one or the other? I’ve used poetry to simultaneously [...]

I’ve learned to attribute many of the good outcomes in my life to luck. Of course, it’s some luck and mostly hard work, but I’ve learned as a working class college student at an elite school, [...]

I grew up too close to the ocean learned that beautiful is a dangerous word — It fills mouths like saliva demanding to be devoured. The first time someone called me beautiful I kissed him [...]

As a senior in college, everyday is a constant game of “who’s going to ask me what I want to be when I grow up today?” The answers I rattle off are routine now, but the answers I want to give are [...]