Little Joy, Cornerstone Press, January 2026, 110pp.
Note from the author:
Little Joy is a collection of poems that aims to hold up the small joys of this world, as a push-back against the cruelties and injustices of the powerful. The book is divided into five sections that roughly center around the following subjects respectively: 1) nature, 2) art and desire, 3) work/autobiography, 4) secular “holiness,” and 5) love/home/family. Though the poems in Little Joy reach toward the many joys of being alive, the shadows of dread that haunt the world are often in the background of these poems.
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Here, Where I Lay Down
there are trees. A tall one
that has shed all its leaves,
has its roots in my heart.
One, still bright with red
and orange, touches
the great loves of my life,
while a spruce, evergreen,
keeps me shamelessly naive.
All of us breathe,
and who can truly say
what color we are? Look
at the ground with all these
fallen leaves and you’ll see
every shade under the sun.
To everything there is a season,
turn, turn. It’s fall, so fall
for all of it: pity, love, the joke.
Tomorrow the grind—
debts, emails, the commute
and bad news—but not today.
Today I am body and earth
in repose. Lines between dirt,
air, trees, and me are blurred.
The more I look, the less I know
where one ends and I begin.
Shamelessexuberance
The redbud can’t contain itself—
blossoms breaking out
from the bark of its trunk and limbs.
A rooster two yards over
pipes up brag
for all kinds of lust.
Two squirrels swirl, frisk and twist
under a canopy
of apple flowers; they need
no tree of knowledge. And listen!—
wrens and crows
and creepers and jays and, and, and…
Even the dull backyard is now lush
in a blush
of violets trying to tint and tempt me
though these days have me
freighted with fretting. For shame.
Transfiguration
Baby, I’m bird, plant, wild-
flower. I’m a hothouse magnolia
and the fallen angel.
I am evo and emo, Adam
and Eve-o. I am so happy
in my artful Garden of Eden, oh!
Come feed my squirrels,
ransack my drawers,
read all my poems—
what’s mine is yours.
Once I was a boring little boy,
and once I was even
an everyman, but—
for God’s sake—I took a look
at so many books
and all was not lost,
but won: E pluribus unum
and all! Come celebrate with me
before ice melts, plants wilt,
and wildlife’s gone.
Let’s make a paradise
of this mess. Let’s make saints
green with envy. Let’s turn
everything green!
Here in this little hodgepodge
of heaven, I have been
transported, transformed, trans-
fixed by joy.
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Matthew Murrey is the author of Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026) and Bulletproof (Jacar Press, 2019). He has recently had poems in North American Review, Flyway, En•Trance, ballast, and elsewhere. He was a public school librarian for more than 20 years and lives in Urbana, IL with his partner.
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