Harryette Mullen, poet, new to me, I like her

Found this. New to me. The picture is absurd but I can't find an appropriate one and better a goddess than a tennis shoe (or not) (not sure).

The Buffalo Sound page has extensive linkage on Harryette Mullen, including an interview by Barbara Deming.


This is a real-time posting. I am including a 2nd photo, this of a living goddess insofar as all poets of the female vernacular are goddesses.

More real time: I got onto all this by googling poems and fashion.  Well.  However I reach a good poem I reach it.

Black Nikes


We need quarters like King Tut needed a boat. A slave could row him to heaven from his crypt in Egypt full of loot. We've lived quietly among the stars, knowing money isn't what matters. We only bring enough to tip the shuttle driver when we hitch a ride aboard a trailblazer of light. This comet could scour the planet. Make it sparkle like a fresh toilet swirling with blue. Or only come close enough to brush a few lost souls. Time is rotting as our bodies wait for now I lay me down to earth. Noiseless patient spiders paid with dirt when what we want is star dust. If nature abhors an expensive appliance, why does the planet suck ozone? This is a big ticket item, a thickety ride. Please page our home and visit our sigh on the wide world’s ebb. Just point and cluck at our new persuasion shoes. We’re opening the gate that opens our containers for recycling. Time to throw down and take off on our launch. This flight will nail our proof of pudding. The thrill of victory is, we’re exiting earth. We're leaving all this dirt.

Black Nikes, courtesy of Poets.org/ Originally published in Santa Monica Review, fall 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Harryette Mullen. All rights reserved.