Harryette Mullen

                    ROADMAP

She wants a man she can just
unfold when she needs him
then fold him up again
like those 50 cent raincoats
women carry in their purses
in case they get caught in stormy weather.

This one has her thumb out
for a man who’s going her way.
She’ll hitch with him a while,
let him take her down the road for a piece.

But I want to take you where you’re going
I’m unfolding for you
like a roadmap you can never again fold           up
exactly the same as before...

Poet Harryette Mullen was born in Florence, Alabama, on July 1, 1953, and raised in Fort Worth. She attended the University of Texas where she earned degrees in English and literature and  worked in the Artists in Schools Program. She has taught at Cornell University and currently teaches African American literature and creative writing at UCLA.

Her books include Tree Tall Woman, Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, Muse & Drudge, Blues Baby, and Sleeping With the Dictionary, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry. Her poetry has been compared to that of Melvin B Tolson, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks and Gertrude Stein, especially in the wordplay and allusion found in her later works. She credits the speech she heard growing up in Texas as sparking her interest in the way language is used.

                                                SHEDDING SKIN

                                   Pulling out of the old scarred skin

                                   (old rough thing I don't need now

                                   I strip off

                                   slip out of

                                   leave behind)

                                   I slough off deadscales

                                   flick skinflakes to the ground

  

                                   Shedding toughness

                                   peeling layers down

                                   to vulnerable stuff

  

                                   And I'm blinking off old eyelids

                                   for a new way of seeing

  

                                   By the rock I rub against

                                   I'm going to be tender again