Present Tense

Abstract

Present Tense* Harryette Mullen (bio) 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 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. [End Page 142] Harryette Mullen Harryette Mullen, a native of Alabama, grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. She is author of seven books of poems: Tree Tall Woman, Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, Muse & Drudge, Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), Blues Baby (2002), and Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse and Drudge (2006). The recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2005, she is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. (She is featured in a special section in Callaloo 19.3, Summer 1996, pp. 637–689) Footnotes * Reprinted from Sleeping with the Dictionary (Berkeley: U of California P, 2002) with permission of the University of California Press and Harryette Mullen. Copyright © 2009 Charles H. Rowell