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
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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 ReviewColorado ReviewDenver QuarterlyNew Ohio ReviewQuarterly WestWashington Square Review, and other journals. He lives in Houston.