Christopher Brean Murray
Crimes of the Future

Parking an opinion in cyberspace without a permit.

 

Listening to an unorthodox symphony.

 

Raising your voice to the representative of a transnational corporation.

 

Planting seeds in unapproved soil.

 

Laughing at a masterpiece in public.

 

Ingesting “freelance berries” picked at a mountain pass.

 

Looking someone too intently in the eye.

 

Sketching a beardless Jesus.

 

Copulating under a cloudburst in a windstorm.

 

Mimicking the voice of a newscaster.

 

Quitting a job everyone agrees you should keep.

 

Conversing meanderingly for several hours on a weekday.

 

Commiserating with the enemy’s losses.

 

Goose-stepping through a graveyard in autumn.

 

Stroking the hair of a good-looking child.

 

Insinuating the limitations of science.

 

Kissing a foreigner at a time of war.

 

Taking up a musical instrument after the age of thirty.

 

Talking to a dog as if it were a human.

 

Drinking water directly from a lake or stream.

 

Hoarding tracts of undeveloped land.

 

Spreading rumors about a theme park.

 

Forgetting to take your medication.

 

Remembering the failures of your nation.

 

Burning the biography of a decorated historian.

 

Making unverifiable predictions.

 

 

Found In Volume 51, No. 05
Read Issue
  • Murray
Christopher Brean Murray
About the Author

Christopher Brean Murray is the author of Black Observatory, which was selected by Dana Levin as the winner of the 2021-22 Jake Adam York Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, New Ohio Review, Quarterly West, Washington Square Review, and other journals. He lives in Houston.