Reading a Poem of Harryette Mullen

A book of poems by Harryette Mullen sits open on the table, its creamy white stiff leaves fanned open in filtered light. Mullen’s words and letters lay neatly on the page. Each letter holds subtle curves. Erect “Ls” are topped by tiny slopes. “Ts” have gutters on each end of a cross beam atop a fine vertical line.

The page number “5” hangs just below a thin pale grey line just long enough to stop the eye. Its ledge-catcher top is linked to a soft curve like the hip of an art deco dancer.

I want to read this book.

The air around me blows cool. A faint shadow falls across page 4 as it rises in desire to join page 5. I raise my hand from its edge and it completes its gentle journey. Sister leaves follow slowly behind till only the cover lies still against a cool grey marble-topped table.

I open the book again. Five lines, the last of a prose poem, “The Anthropic Principle” float near the top of the page. Her words begin, “pilot lost our moral compass…” form a tidy block. Above, an inch of creamy white space. Below, a cup of cream. Within its mass, a greyish fleck floats. I try to flick it off with the back of my sprung fingernail but it doesn’t move. It lives, alone, among the fibres of the paper, missed by the paper maker’s mesh.

I ease back in my chair. Mullen’s words scumble and rustle, “it’s just a freak accident locked up in a philosophical debate.”

Note:
This piece was inspired by Harryette Mullen’s beautiful new collection of poetry appearing in the New California Writing series.

Mullen, Harryette, 2002
Sleeping with the Dictionary, University of California Press, Berkeley
Book design by Nola Burger

About the Poet
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