Matthew Murrey

Sgr A*

It is at the center
pulling on everything,
even light. You can’t see
it, but it’s there. Can you
imagine it? Too close
and even the brightest
are goners—shredded,
their destructions
are terribly brilliant
as they whirl into it 
near the speed of light.
That far away hole
has the mass, the pull
of millions of suns,
and yet has nothing to do
with who eats and who
goes hungry, who makes it
to a doctor, and who dies.
There is a hole as close
as the heart, and there
is no escaping its pull,
like that hole I call the future.

Matthew Murrey is the author of Bulletproof (Jacar Press, 2019) and the forthcoming collection, Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026). In addition to having had work in The Inflectionist Review, his poems can be found in The Dodge, Bear Review, HAD, and elsewhere. He was a public-school librarian for 21 years, and lives in Urbana, IL with his partner. His website is at https://www.matthewmurrey.net/ . He can be found on Instagram, Twitter and Bluesky under the handle @mytwords.