Rick Mullin’s poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including American Arts Quarterly, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, Rabbit Ears: TV Poems, and Raintown Review. His books include Soutine, a biographical novel in verse about the painter Chaim Soutine, published in 2012 by Dos Madres Press, and the long poem, Huncke, recently published in a tenth anniversary second edition by Exot Books. His forthcoming collection, The Basilisk, is due out in 2021 from Dos Madres Press. He is a journalist and painter.
All work
I faced her toward the river in a shirt/or mid-length camisole. That’s all I had/ to work with in a minute’s time and dirt./ She gives the composition something bad/ to hold against a shadow on the wall.
into the deep haze of the sleep one lacks, / the lag, the heavy sense of moving out / of time. And back. And forth across the grachts //
What is to the waking eye more beautiful /
than coming into Lackawanna Station /
in the first red ochre day of spring, …
The zipper on my laptop bag went bust /
at John Wayne Airport in the morning rush. /
I was a nightmare at security …
One springtime morning in Cologne, /
on business, traveling alone /
and walking at an early hour, /
I came on Konrad Adenauer. …
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