Sleeping with the Dictionary

by Mullen, Harryette

  shit, grit, motherwit shock jock Shy Di sin-bin Sin Den singles mingle singsong

  skag hag skimble-scamble skinflint skinny mini skunk funk sky high slammer jammer

  Slice o’ Rice slice & dice Slick Rick Slim Jim slo-mo SmarteCarte snack pack

  snail mail snail trail Smothers Brothers smut-butt smut slut sneak peek snowblower

  snug as a bug in a rug soap-on-a-rope SoHo space is the place space race Spamarama

  Spam in a can SpecTech speed reader spit-spot splish-splash spring fling Spruce Goose

  squeegee Stan the Man stars & bars steam clean Stinky Pinky Stix Nix Hix Pix stranger danger

  Stormin’ Norman street beat stun gun stupid Cupid Style File suck and tuck Suds Your Duds

  sugar booger sump pump super duper Superloopers sure cure surf & turf Swatch watch sweater weather sweetmeat Swiss Kriss Swiss Miss

  ta-da Tears for Fears tea tree teeny peeny teeny-weeny teepee teeter-totter telltale Temporary Contemporary tent event Texas Exes Tex-Mex thigh high think pink thinktank thin’s in, but fat’s where it’s at

  thin skin thrill kill thrills & chills Throat Coat tib-fib Tictac ticky-tacky

  ticktock tie dye tin tan tan tiptop titbit tit for tat tittle-tattle ton of fun tough enough tough stuff town & gown Tragic Magic

  treat and street Tricky Dicky true blue trust buster turkey jerky tussy-mussy tutti-frutti

  Twine Time

  ubble-gubble Ubby Dubby Ugh Bug ugly-mugly undone unfun urge to purge use it or lose it

  Vanessa the Undresser vice price vomit comet voodoo

  Wacko Jacko wacky shack wacky tobacky walkie-talkie Wavy Gravy waylay

  wear & tear Weegee Whack Pack whale tale wham bam whammer-jammer

  wheeler dealer whimwham white flight white knight Wicked Pickett

  weird beard wild child willy-nilly Wilt the Stilt wining & dining

  wingding Winken & Blinken wishy-washy womb to tomb wonton

  Wooly Bully Writing Is Fighting

  X-sex

  Yak Pak yank the crank Yertle the Turtle ying-yang yoohoo

  zero to hero zigzag zip your lip Zoo Doo zoot suit Zulu

  Junk Mail

  Thus is just a nothing to thaw you from your warpath and genius during our assonance beguiled two-time yellow agony. Those conversions chapped my thistle in manzanita waylay. In particular, they held a deer and latex impaled on my thistle. Not a deadbeat goes by when I donate this of you. That’s why your silhouette remains, for me, sadistic and painterly. Won’t you writhe or crawl? Let’s mambo and be frisky. Your jiffy jockstrap.

  Kamasutra Sutra

  This is a story I have heard:

  Entwined in a passionate embrace

  with his beloved wife,

  the holy one exclaimed,

  “I have reached enlightenment!”

  His devoted partner responded,

  “I’m truly happy for you, my love,

  and if you can give me another minute,

  I believe I’ll get there too.”

  Kirstenography

  for K. M.

  K was burn at the bend of the ear in the mouth of Remember. She was the fecund chill burn in her famish. She came into the word with a putty smoother, a handsewn farther, and a yodeler cistern. They were all to gather in a rosy horse on a piety sweet in Alligator Panorama.

  When her smoother and farther wrought her chrome from the hose spittle, her cistern fought the piddle ably was a girly heeded bawl. A bawl that dank silk, booed, burgled, rabbled, fried, and tweed in wipers. This was not a bawl that swept in the joy blocks with her rather joys. This was a giving bawl that wasn’t a joy like a fluffed fan mail. Oh no! This was her grand blue piddle cistern that cold knot talc for a song time, but lonely fried and braid rather voices that the yodeler one cold knot rubberband.

  It shook a few ears until they cold talc to gather, tall yolks, shear sacreds, heave a conversion or a dish cushion. That was laughter they kissed their handsewn farther who wind sway to Cheap Cargo, Ill Annoy. Mum and gulls made their mauve to Foreword Text. As swoon as they cold they boasted fetters in the snail to him and he relied as mulch as he cold.

  Their inelegant smoother was a reacher who muddied lard, learned debris, and wept them upon the prosper pat. Reaching them fright from strong was her per rental doodly. They threw up and wind soft to mercy rule and hinder guardian, then on to sedimentary, fecund dairy, and slide rule. They were wood in all those paces, and waded to knowledge at Cutie Ostentatious.

  The smoother and her dodders all learned debris to gather. Evidentially, two quirked as proofs in the loony varsity. K was quirking for the slate of Taxes Hysterical Remission. Laughter a schmaltz fart with a wanky lurk, K fond her Sanity. A proof of reckoned comics. K quirked to learn her nastier debris and latter she rave burps and becalmed herself a smoother.

  Now she does her writhing ghostly a tome. Quirks at that muse, um, that’s in Chapped Apple Milling Sea. Enduring, she has her Sanity and they becalmed the prod parentheses of Adenoid and Williwaw. They all loved shapely over laughter.

  The Lunar Lutheran

  In chapels of opals and spice, O Pisces pal, your social pep makes you a friend to all Episcopals. Brush off lint, gentile, but it’s not intelligent to beshrew the faith of Hebrews. I heard this from a goy who taught yoga in the home of Goya. His Buddhist robe hid this budding D bust in this B movie dud. If Ryan bites a rep, a Presbyterian is best in prayer. Oh tears oxen trod! To catch oil, or a man born to the manor, you need a Catholic, Roman. On Mon. morn, Mom hums “Om” with no other man but Norm or Ron. A Mormon son would gladly leave a gas slave in Las Vegas for a hut in Utah. These slums I’m from, I’m leaving, Miss Lum, with a slim sum donated by some Muslims. What would it cost to gain the soul of an agnostic? Where the atheist is at, God only knows! ’Tis hate, he is at the heist. A Baptist was able to stab a pit bull when the sun hid behind some Hindus. To fan a mess, I write manifestos. So said the lunar Lutheran.

  Mantra for a Classless Society,

  or Mr. Roget’s Neighborhood

  cozy comfortable homey homelike

  sheltered protected private concealed covered

  snug content relaxed restful sedate

  untroubled complacent placid serene calm undisturbed

  wealthy affluent prosperous substantial

  acceptable satisfied satisfactory adequate

  uncomfortable uneasy restless

  unsuitable indigent

  bothersome irritating painful

  troublesome discomfiting disturbing

  destitute impoverished needy

  penniless penurious poor

  poverty-stricken embarrassing

  upsetting awkward ill-at-ease

  nervous self-conscious tense

  Music for Homemade Instruments

  improvising with Douglas Ewart

  I dug you artless, I dug you out. Did you re-do? You dug me less, art. You dug, let’s do art. You dug me, less art. Did you redo? If I left art out, you dug. My artless dug-out. You dug, let art out. Did you re-do, dug-out canoe? Easy as a porkpie piper-led cinch. Easy as a baby bounce. Hop on pot, tin pan man. Original abstract, did you re-do it? Betting on shy cargo, strutting dimpled low-cal strumpets employ a hipster to blow up the native Formica. Then divide efficiency on hairnets, flukes, faux saxons. You dug me out, didn’t you? Did you re-do? Ever curtained to experiment with strumpet strutting. Now curtains to milk laboratory. Desecrated flukes & panics displayed by mute politicians all over this whirly-gig. Hey, you dug! Art lasts. Did you re-do? Well-known mocker of lurching unused brains, tribal & lustrous diddlysquats, Latin dimension crepe paper & muscular stacks. Curtains for perky strumpets strutting with mites in the twilight of their origami funkier purses. Artless, you dug. Did you re-do? For patting wood at flatland, thanks. For bamboozle flukes at Bama, my seedy medication. Thanks for my name in the yoohoo. Continental camp-out, percolating throughout the whirly-gig on faux saxon flukes. You dug art, didn’t you? Did you re-do?
/>   Naked Statues

  Oscars for the war of noses. With a mummy out of Egypt, a prosthetic muppet. Opening shot: cliché of travel genre. In several scenes, a woman put together in black, white, or khaki. A woman with her back up like his map of mountain. Finally, she dies. Then, at last, he dies. So romantic are the patient English. This all went on when I was making up my syllabus. Telephone and radio told who the winners were. I didn’t need a crystal. Last time I watched was leopard chair and whoopie cushion. That’s when I saw the industry of light, our buttered roll. These are the friends of inklish, I was told, by someone from an anglophile race. They read all the great books and perform them in the garden of naked statues.

  Natural Anguish

  Every anguish is arbitrary but no one is neuter. Bulldozer can knock down dikes. Why a ragged bull don’t demolish the big house? The fired cook was deranged. On the way back when I saw red I thought ouch. Soon when I think colored someone bleeds. The agency tapping my telephone heard my pen drop. Now I’m walking out of pink ink. We give microphones to the voiceless to amplify their silence. The complete musician could play any portion of the legacy of the instrument. My ebony’s under the ocean. Please bring back my bone (sic) to me. Once was illegal for we to testify. Now all us do is testify. We’s all prisoners of our own natural anguish. It’s the rickety rickshaw that will drive us to the brink.

  Once Ever After

  There was this princess who wet the bed through many mattresses, she was so attuned. She neither conversed with magical beasts nor watched her mother turn into a stairwell or a stoop. Her lips were. Her hair was. Her complexion was. Her beauty or her just appearance. What she wore. She was born on a chessboard, with parents and siblings, all royal. Was there a witch? Was she enchanted, or drugged? When did she decide to sleep? Dreaming a knight in armor, she thought it meant jousting. His kind attack with streamers. A frog would croak. A heart would cough after only one bite. Something was red. There was wet and there was weather. She couldn’t make it gold without his name. Her night shifts in the textile mill. She forgot she was a changeling peasant girl. Spinning, she got pricked. That’s where roses fell and all but one fairy wept. It remains that she be buried alive, knowing that a kiss is smaller than a delayed hunger.

  O, ’Tis William

  for W. D.

  —Is it Otis?

  —I’m …

  —Otis, so it is.

  —Am I?

  —’Tis Otis.

  —I am …

  —So, it’s Otis.

  —I am William.

  —O, Otis, sit.

  —O, I am Will.

  —Sit, Otis.

  —It’s Will.

  —Is Otis to sit?

  —Otis?

  —Is Will, so sit!

  —O, will I?

  —Will Otis sit?

  —I’m William!

  —O, will Will sit?

  —I will sit.

  —So sit, Otis!

  —O, I will sit. I am Will.

  —So sit, Will.

  —I’m William. So I am! I will sit!

  —So sit still, William.

  —O, I am! I sit.

  —Otis, sit still!

  —I am still William!

  —Otis is William.

  —Will is William.

  —William is Otis too.

  —O, I am William! William is Otis! Otis is William!

  I am Will! Otis too! O, William Otis, it is! I am!

  Outside Art

  A humble monumental

  music made of syllables

  or a heartbroken crystal

  cathedral with gleaming walls

  of Orangina bottles

  Present Tense

  Now that my ears are connected to a random answer machine, the wrong brain keeps talking through my hat. Now that I’ve been licked all over by the English tongue, my common law spout is suing for divorce. Now that the Vatican has confessed and the White House has issued an apology, I can forgive everything and forget nothing. Now the overdrawn credits roll as the bankrupt star drives a patchwork cab to the finished line, where a broke robot waves a mended tablecloth, which is the stale flag of a checkmate career. Now that the history of civilization has been encrypted on a medium grain of rice, it’s taken the starch out of the stuffed shorts. Now as the Voice of America crackles and fades, the market reports that today the Euro hit a new low. Now as the reel unravels, our story unwinds with the curious dynamic of an action flick without a white protagonist.

  Quality of Life

  Does all dust turn grave in his nightmare of cloned sheep? Is Bo Peep losing sleep? Did the lamb march in? Eat the dandelions? Is lamb chop an unnatural act? Hello, Dolly, have you any wool? Serious, serious, thick hats full of kinks. So don’t forget to pack your Polartec. Last week we picked oranges, but the apple’s still chilling. She might not be the cruelest fool. Just a lame dame on a blip trip. Her brain on spring break. A trick vacation. A fake date. A fluke, or just a flake. Was there then but she was in the left at the wrong. Nothing to see but a strung gallery of poetry inhibitions. Her book on the table. Nobody buying. Luck was there to take her in. A friend with a new look, a light blond bob. A friend tending to the dying. One who lends money for books. Who shows her the neighborhood paper bag and circles all her haunts. The mayor takes credit for the quality of life. Mention money on the street and a hand will be extended. They stretch out in a crowd. They sign for the wild child of yoga. Walk across the park from Charlie Parker. Eat sweet potato pirogies in uppity cafe. Look at other merchandise. A smattering of tribes. Unheard of march in which the men protest themselves. Callaloo and collards are equivalent. Or banana is the same as plata no es. Narrative never is mere entertainment. To entertain is knowing how to be a woman. French theories suggest the best in women’s writing are the men. “These star-apple leaves along the sound of Sonny Rollins River.” Tina Turner set fire to her wigs so she could wear all burnt hair. Tourists flock to Strawberry Fields. Where sheep grazed in erstwhile Seneca Village. No one gets agit-props from avant-garde. A-Train from Caffe Reggio out of postcards. Hour and a half by subway to JFK. Bumpy return to port of lax security. Once I get that zip gun your reality Czech’s in the escargot.

  Resistance Is Fertile

  This system needs your moral fiber like a bowl of X brand flakes. If your kind cannot be assimilated to make spare parts for Borg wars, your resistance challenges the ant farm to adapt. You might think the system’s tone deaf, but our software’s immune. You are the virus that keeps it in tune. We are the tolerant host, which makes you the guest worker colony of E. coli, the chitlins inside the chitlins. Catching hits off our perfect pitch, your contra fit’s a false note passed through the phony caca. We call you irresponsible, say you’re indigestible, and it’s undeniably true it’s tough to swallow you. Your data resisted analysis, but if you are not consumed, your flawed construction only proves that we are perfection cubed. Did you need to read the label on Olean to know the SOS goes out when the chip’s going down? To Cuisinart our metaphors once again, let’s just say that Dracula’s liquid protein diet could use some roughage to help with his next smooth move. A bloodsucker’s got to worry about irregularity. So pollsters press the pulse, take specimens of the blood count. Pundits pooh-pooh as law and order candidate Bruce Wayne leaves his potty to go on a turd-pooty ticket: Libertarian runs on avowal movement platform. The result will be a better grade of guano piling up in the bat cave. Our constipation requires frequent amendments to feed the tree of liberty. Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Man, you’re digging it with a shovel. When you’re all pooped out, we’re just breaking a second wind.

  She Swam On from Sea to Shine

  Hide and seek, where the tree decided to sleep was where she ran. She ran away with a ruckus. The baby girl was stolen by a tipsy woman came to take her. Where they found her in the mud. She’d stolen a doll. Her doll got sick, she died. The brown doll from her father. The pink doll came from somewhere else. She had drows
y eyes like marbles. The rabbit was painted on the furniture in the room with pom-pom curtains. The pig slept at her grandmother’s. The pig that ate money, not the country pig that ate molasses and sunglasses. Where her mother kept a canoe and paddle. Where stiff lace stood, in the city not the country, where they fed their stinky sheep. Paper shell pecans, climb high. Sweet figs and green plums in forbidden backyards.

  She remembers sleeping on a train. She remembers a long sleep, rocking, rocking. She had her dress on all the way. Asleep, diving into dreams. Salty and warm, like ocean, like broth. Another time she slept, she dreamed of rats. When she woke up, the kittens were all killed. We’re in a photograph with a handsome man smiling. Seersucker suits are what to wear in summer. That other man I don’t remember, the one who made your hair fall. That’s when the doctor said you need a root. You need your roots. You need a doctor who knows roots and will root for you. That’s how we all got better. That’s how we got to all your exes live in Texas. All the livelong day with the cowgirl you left behind.

  Those saxophone streets and scratchy sidewalks. Those Baptist conventions. That steamy summer. The boy who threw tar on me. The boy who made me his tar baby. The one who broke my watch, knocked me down, pushed me over. The boy who threw rocks at me. The boy who lost his foot under the wheels of a train. The boy who bought me ice cream. The girl who was my friend. The girl who wanted to give me a kitten. The girl with burnt hands. The girl whose house was dark. The girl who never wore socks. The girl who said, “Poot on you.” I had a ribbon in my hair. I was too proper and prissy. I must think I’m something. I must think she’s nothing.