Sleeping with the Dictionary
Read Sleeping with the Dictionary Online
Authors: Harryette Mullen
Sleeping
with the
Dictionary
For
, by Carol Snow
Enola Gay
, by Mark Levine
Selected Poems
, by Fanny Howe
Sleeping with the Dictionary
, by Harryette Mullen
Commons
, by Myung Mi Kim
The Guns and Flags Project
, by Geoffrey G. O'Brien
Harryette Mullen
with the Dictionary
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2002 by the Regents of the
University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data
Mullen, Harryette Romell.
    Sleeping with the dictionary /
Harryette Mullen.
    p.    cm.â(New California
poetry; 4)
   Â
ISBN
0-520-23142-2 (cloth: alk.
paper).âISBN 0-520-23143-0 (pbk.:
alk. paper)
    1. Language and languagesâPoetry.
   2. African AmericansâPoetry.
I. Title. II. Series.
PS3563.U3954 S64Â Â Â Â Â 2002
8II'.54âdc2IÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 2001048050
Manufactured in the United States of America
11Â Â 10Â Â 09Â Â 08Â Â 07Â Â 06Â Â 05Â Â 04Â Â 03Â Â 02
10Â Â 9Â Â 8Â Â 7Â Â 6Â Â 5Â Â 4Â Â 3Â Â 2Â Â 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992 (R 1997)
(Permanence of Paper)
.
Dark words
more radiant
than onyx!
André Breton
Coals to Newcastle, Panama Hats from Ecuador
Mantra for a Classless Society, or Mr. Roget's Neighborhood
Music for Homemade Instruments
Ted Joans at the Café Bizarre
Wipe That Simile Off Your Aphasia
Xenophobic Nightmare in a Foreign Language
I gratefully acknowledge the editors of the following publications and web projects, where these poems have previously appeared:
African American Review, A Gathering of the Tribes, American Poet, Aufgabe, Best American Poetry, Black Renaissance, Bombay Gin, Booglite, Callaloo, Cave Canem Anthology, Colored Greens, Columbia Poetry Review, Combo, Crow, Dia Center for the Arts Poetry Broadside, Empty Set, Facture, Fence, Framework, Gare du Nord, Giant Steps, Hambone, In Celebration of the Muse, Konch, La Jornada Semanal, La Vitrina, Lipstick Eleven, Long News in the Short Century, Mirage, Otra Cancion: Seis Poetas Norteamericanos, Parnassus, Poetry in Motion, Role Call, Santa Monica Review, Southfields, The World, Tripwire, Womenhouse
, and
Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics.
My thanks to Enrique Chagoya for permission to use his work
Line Essence Color
on the cover. Thanks also to Judy Natal for the author photograph.
Sleeping
with the
Dictionary
Forgive me, I'm no good at this. I can't write back. I never read your letter. I can't say I got your note. I haven't had the strength to open the envelope. The mail stacks up by the door. Your hand's illegible. Your postcards were defaced. “Wash your wet hair”? Any document you meant to send has yet to reach me. The untied parcel service never delivered. I regret to say I'm unable to reply to your unexpressed desires. I didn't get the book you sent. By the way, my computer was stolen. Now I'm unable to process words. I suffer from aphasia. I've just returned from Kenya and Korea. Didn't you get a card from me yet? What can I tell you? I forgot what I was going to say. I still can't find a pen that works and then I broke my pencil. You know how scarce paper is these days. I admit I haven't been recycling. I never have time to read the
Times.
I'm out of shopping bags to put the old news in. I didn't get to the market. I meant to clip the coupons. I haven't read the mail yet. I can't get out the door to work, so I called in sick. I went to bed with writer's cramp. If I couldn't get back to writing, I thought I'd catch up on my reading. Then
Oprah
came on with a fabulous author plugging her best-selling book.
The pope of cosmology addresses a convention. When he talks the whole atmosphere changes. He speaks through a computer. When he asks can you hear me, the whole audience says yes. It's a science locked up in a philosophical debate. There are a few different theories. There could be many different realities. You might say ours exists because we do. You could take a few pounds of matter, heat it to an ungodly temperature, or the universe was a freak accident. There may be a limit to our arrogance, but one day the laws of physics will read like a detailed instruction manual. A plane that took off from its hub in my hometown just crashed in the President's hometown. The news anchor says the pilot is among the dead. I was hoping for news of the President's foreign affair with a diplomat's wife. I felt a mystical connection to the number of confirmed dead whose names were not released. Like the time I was three handshakes from the President. Like when I thought I heard that humanitarians dropped a smart blond on the Chinese embassy. Like when the cable was severed and chairs fell from the sky because the pilot flew with rusty maps. What sane pilot would land in that severe rain with hard hail and gale-force wind. With no signal of distress. With no foghorns to warn the civilians, the
pilot lost our moral compass in the bloody quagmire of collateral damage. One theory says it's just a freak accident locked up in a philosophical debate. It's like playing poker and all the cards are wild. Like the arcane analysis of a black box full of insinuations of error.
You are a ukulele beyond my microphone
You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia
You are a union beyond my meiosis
You are a unicycle beyond my migration
You are a universe beyond my mitochondria
You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis
You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram
You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur
You are a eureka beyond my maitai
You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper
You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird
You are a unit beyond my mileage
You are a Yugoslavia beyond my mind's eye
You are a yoo-hoo beyond my minor key
You are a Euripides beyond my mime troupe
You are a Utah beyond my microcosm
You are a Uranus beyond my Miami
You are a youth beyond my mylar
You are a euphoria beyond my myalgia
You are a Ukrainian beyond my Maimonides
You are a Euclid beyond my miter box
You are a Univac beyond my minus sign
You are a Eurydice beyond my maestro
You are a eugenics beyond my Mayan
You are a U-boat beyond my mind control
You are a euthanasia beyond my miasma
You are a urethra beyond my Mysore
You are a Euterpe beyond my Mighty Sparrow
You are a ubiquity beyond my minority
You are a eunuch beyond my migraine
You are a Eurodollar beyond my miserliness
You are a urinal beyond my Midol
You are a uselessness beyond my myopia
for A.D.
Are aardvarks anxious?
Do dragons dream?
Ever see an eager elephant?
Newts are never nervous, are they?
My ass acts bad
Devil your ears Charybdis
Good engagements deep blue sea
Heaven my eyes your elbow
Last night jobs hard place
Now his legs hell
Rock the lines me
Scylla her breasts shinola
Shit the sheets then
Yesterday my thighs this morning
You your toes today
Californians say No
to bilingual instruction in schools
Californians say No
to bilingual instructions on ballots
Californians say Yes
to bilingual instructions on curbside waste receptacles:
Coloque el recipiente con las flechas hacia la calle
Place container with arrow facing street
No ruede el recipiente con la tapa abierta
Do not tilt or roll container with lid open
Recortes de jardin solamente
Yard clippings only
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 stardust. 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.