Laura Mullen
Better When Broken—
Empty, open—sharp new edges
Catching the light. More lovely
When over, nearly forgotten:
Gorgeous on the point of almost
Going out of sight. Better when
Wounded, softened by deep wrong—
Brackish water—ruined, flooded
By grief; braver moving slowly
Forward, holding this moment’s
Small wavering flame—at last
Past furious (No!) disbelief. Better
Confessing loss on the way, late,
To gratitude: repeating, Once, once…
Best when? Now? Or never. Blessed.
Baton Rouge, Ash Wednesday
Shimmer of bead-strewn asphalt, the gutters glitter and shine:
Pale styrofoam containers smashed open, ooze of red sauce,
Greasy bones, splatter of mystery side-dish, sparkle of plastic and
Shattered glass. Bright yellow banner of police tape, breeze-tugged,
Fluttering. All the infinitely desirable throws are nothing now: muddy
Plush toys, crushed hats, feathers and other goodies, sodden, filthy.
Stunned home-owners are out in the street raking plastic necklaces
Into garbage bags, scritch, scritch; sunlight at last after yesterday’s
Rainstorm. Stuttered gleamings dangle from drooping telephone
Lines, tangled, twisting, more loops of lost beads sway in the trees
Among new green leaves. And that pounding, scraping, shudder’s
A tractor: shoving down Spanishtown road that roiling knotted wave
Of trash we begged for—“Please Mister!”—yesterday. Only what,
Brilliant, remains out of reach still seems pretty, and nobody…
Laura Mullen has been a MacDowell and Karolyi Foundation Fellow, a featured poet at the International Poetry Festival in Taipei, a Rona Jaffe Award recipient and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Her poetry has been anthologized in collections from Norton, Wesleyan, and elsewhere; recent work has appeared in the Harvard Review, Court Green, the Bennington Review, Diagram, and the Georgia Review. Mullen’s first book, The Surface, was a National Poetry Series selection, and her subsequent poetry collections and hybrid-genre works have been published by the University of California Press, FuturePoem, and Otis / Seismicity, among other presses. Solid Objects published her ninth collection, EtC, in fall 2023.
