Rick Mullin’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Arts Quarterly, The Raintown Review, Unsplendid, Méasŭre, The Flea, and Ep;phany. His epic poem Soutine, on the life of the painter Chaim Soutine, was published earlier this year by Dos Madres Press in Loveland, Ohio. His book-length poem, Huncke, was published by Seven Towers, Dublin, Ireland, in 2010. And his chapbook, Aquinas Flinched, was published by the Modern Metrics imprint of Exot Books, New York City, in 2008.
Summer 2012
Table of Contents - Vol. VIII, No. 2
Poetry Fiction Translations Reviews
Rick Mullin
At the dedication of a statue
in St. Louis, July 29, 2011
Never mind the profligate’s storied priors.
Tax evasion. Federal teenage traffic.
Maybellene and Johnny B. Goode remember
who did the driving.
Dirty heat at Blueberry Hill this morning,
hear the root beer factory's bang and choogle.
Somewhere Congress struggles to raise the ceiling.
Not in St. Louis.
Let the city councilman sleep til Sunday.
Let the cell phones photograph total strangers
rubbing bronze and ducking the lyric sidewalk,
touching the Gibson.
Getting on the subway here at 6:00 AM
I come upon a lighted hall of refugees.
A dormitory. Everything is quiet, grim,
the galley soft and gray with morning effigies.
I interrupt their sleep. A head might rise and fall
among the others as I hang beside the door
uncertain of my destination. Here I call
on numbers, an address, improbable before
these somnolescent passengers, their hair anointed
with the oils of their familiarity
as shoulder-pressed-to-shoulder in their pre-appointed
space they burrow to a regularity
of polyester coats and dirty woolen shrouds.
How passing strange to brush a suit against these clouds.
Boston, April 26, 2012
© Rick Mullin
