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Kenneth Mulvey writes stories and poems that displace time and space. He's like Einstiens cannonball-on-the-rubber-sheet demonstration, showing that all constants are relative. Witness for example, this excerpt from Mr. Mulveys unpublished 20,000 word story “Niemand”
Shovel mud into that lewd mouth! Yes, pack it in well, Yes! Ho! What goes? Disturbing the peace, I say! Indecent exposure, seems to me! Flagrant unamerican debauchery, damn it! poison potbellied ruffians burble out of plum plump musculus buccinators while churning cuban cigars with sausage fingers, their national flag handkerchief begrimed with coal snot thrown haphazardly upon the golden arms of their golden chairs suspended in vulture circles above the ghettos …dying with nothing given but hatred and pacifying the rage of injustice while leaning on systemic steel prison walls… Quick m’boys, we must legislate these asocial beasts!
And now, witness this first half of his poem:
“12:37am is her best “ quiver girl in rags pock marked pelted in god’s flick urchining in no coat at all, seen a leftover bite of hamburger flung hit her breast taut, highway semi hisses wet dust below, overpass coin whore so near purpose can’t feel no fingertips, sympathy dog whimpered and done run off, probably dead in dirty tire tracks, in the darkness of loving arms out of the rain but she can forget any necessary lifeblood, accumulating copper cancer she does is the sole reason, hair hanging long like tar and one quarter away at 11:37pm, no mascara runs, people is hiding they change and not remembering, quite simply, what they true once was… a-see! a dime, two nickels and a blowjob took her to the westend of town where the bus runs slow down the line, got back central in a loss of breath, violent fuming mist, ticket man say no go girly gal,
I’m using the word “witness” instead of “read” because Kenneth Mulveys poetry first caught my attention peripherally- out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t looking for it, but when I saw it, I began to actively watch these images of his that I was seeing. So, I asked Kenneth if he would agree to be the January Outsider Writer and submit to my curiosity.
Kathy Polenberg:
Kenneth, what I find compelling about your writing is that even when it can be gender-identified, it's not exclusively "about" Kenneth Mulvey. In other words- the poet isn't the poem- its writing that I can't profile by age, education, political bent, region, or historic context. It can't be strictly identified as only male pov. I think that’s good. Its not memoir or vignettes that hold a mirror up only to the echo as opposed to being the mirror, whether it’s reflected upon or not.
Kenneth Mulvey:
I’m happy to answer any questions you have. I’m glad you dig my work- I dig yours as well. I do agree with your take on my poetry. I thank you for not being scared of naughty words and understanding what I'm getting at with my writing.
KP:
Your story “Niemand” quoted above is 33 pages; and I’ve read poems of yours that are up to 3 pages. How does a poem or story let you know it's finished with you, so you step out of its way and let it be consumed by the reader?
KM:
I like how you asked that, Huxley's reducing valve in reverse I suppose. Truth is, most of the time I don't now if a story or a poem is finished. There is no 'yeah, that's the ticket' moment. Writing an ending, for me at least, is a bit like trying to remember the last thought you have before going to sleep or figuring out when you fell out of love with someone. I simply let the words unravel and a story is eventually told. I usually smile though, and think something like 'well, ain't no use in going on anymore'. I'm leaving the states for Mexico tomorrow, be there until the 7th.
KP:
This next poem “dragging out dead in warmest blankets” reads like an anthropology/archeology influenced piece:
goldly italian girls
kneehigh leather boots
gold swimsuits
hold orange iguanas
and dance fuck
with fantastic plumed
mayans in
nike sneakers
to suped american
beats in the
discotheque
isabél,
I don’t understand
I take cinco
watered tequilas
but the ocean
all in moonlight,
I don’t dare
the mayan rum
in my pocket yet,
ever,
los indios surround
shake rattlesnakes
in pure white flash synched
echo symmetry
for the sacrificial
vivacious youth hearts
and I hope they
do, see,
I will not
abandon
you tonight tired
beating, I am off
to you, off
sipping lsd proof
bootleg of carnival
ruins
to your shore,
hoping for your
brutal satiation
to protect for me
vital harmony
brains subtle effuse
back into cosmos
mathematic, in
ounces but yonder now
midget natives flute
mourning acoming,
in ceremonial red cottons,
upon a hundred
foot blue pole
set to spinning,
my face in the sand,
my self stolen to nudity,
thighs chafed,
a west arm bleeding
somehow,
of the east,
fingernails awaiting
the lick of
high
tide
KP: Did you visit the pyramids while you were in Mexico?
KM: I recently visited the chichen itza and tulum ruins. Majestically depressing.
KP: As a writer you seem moved to preserve and invent at the same time- not just language, but historic contexts as well. In other words, your context seems at once flexible and current. Are you living in the time on earth that you ought to be in- or is there a time and place you feel pulled backwards towards or propelled into that you imagine would suit you better?
KM: Wow, you ask a hell of a question. Let me try to answer here without sounding like a rambling moron: Where to begin? Oh, yes, I do believe I ought to be here now, that is, certain atomic evolutions eventually lined up and bang, there is me. That's how I've learned to rationalize everything. Perhaps I'm wrong, but anything else just makes me nervous. Trisecting time in such a way can only mean that we're still screaming into jungles or that we can sit back one day and say 'thank god, it was just a dream'…without the interconnectedness we're just reproductive machines with only the question of 'what the fuck is happening here?' tickling our brains. All three (the historic, heretofore and present) in one instant is where it's at, where ugly divine can saunter about in at least 11 dimensions. So yeah, here and now, in this context, is the basis of my writing/thought processes and its fine and bountiful enough.
KP: Some of your writing actually looks and sounds (to me) ugly, raw and vulgar- yet refuses to be voyeuristic in a gratuitous way. There’s a dignity simply from being well-crafted. Is that something you intuit as a writer?"
KM: As for the 'ugly and raw and vulgar' nature of my writing, well, of course it's not gratuitous.
I'm not writing to be civil, proper or courteous but rather to be as honest as I can be. I usually write about occurrences I shouldn't write about but, I don't think that's my fault. Hopefully, I can also be accused of mixing in a bit of the beautiful and sublime into the crucible every now and then…just as long as it's true.
"anglicized 964"
solar bursting red
defueled hair
pulse equinoxed
above a sea
of a stunted race
oily blackened,
she moves
violin smooth
through the mercado,
she is bikini’d
flamboyant smoking
a cigarette,
the hustle about her
solidifies in
flesh dirty waves
cold wax stares at
me sparkling
dandruff into
tropic blueyellow
the crowd parts
and when she
reaches me
says what you,
eye-talian or something
I say no
american pure bred,
she say oh, takes
a drag,
keeps her eye slant on
me, well, good enough,
I’m lonely anyhow,
beckons with her tan
finger,
I leave a dollar for
the banana and beer,
she leads me to the
beach in front of
another fucking
tonka toy set
of monotonous grey
ruins and sits
down where the water
do crash gentlest,
you know, sacrifices
had to walk their own
assus up them
steps yonder, once
they cut the fool’s
head off, the priest’d
toss it nonchalant like
back down the way he
come up, pauses,
she’s playing with a seashell,
I sit next to her and
say, yeah, I knew,
then they’d drain
the blood
and mix it in with
the soil for to remain
in the bosom of the bountiful,
she scrapes the shell
up her thighs in
bleeding streaks
and rubs it on her
coloradah cunt,
that’s no way to talk
to a lady,
she smiles on the lean,
she licks clean the
banana pulp from
the tarred gaps in
my teeth
KP: Those ruins you mention- I was there 26 years ago - honeymoon in Mexico- it was amazing then. I heard you can't traipse all over them anymore now- but maybe not. . .
KM: No, no more climbing all over the ruins…some lady had a heart attack at the top of Chichen Itza and tumbled all the way down. It is a beautiful place though, regardless of imagining hearts being ripped out on top of the bastard.
Kenneth Mulvey has been or will be published in Thieves Jargon, Zygote in my Coffee, Cherry Bleeds, Sein und Werden, Lit Chaos, Motherkisser. He proudly serves as one of the fiction editors for Thieves Jargon, the best goddamned dose of fiction and poetry, ever, in the universe. You can find him meditating on his back porch in Austin, Texas…bring him sake and he will tell you dirty secrets, you will be enlightened and live the rest of your life wide eye mesmerized…believe me, it works – Lovingly, Sophy.
denied
by Kenneth Mulvey
It’s a baby blue day everywhere. Sonny’s been walking about towns, bumping along in city buses and now sinking into a freshly re-cemented sidewalk with whiskey in his gut and a cigarette upon his lip. Eyes widen and he begins to sweat when grainy coldness lavas into his oversized shoes. -Hey Mr.! Whatndahell is you doin’?! Sonny shrugs his shoulders and keeps on staring down at his dilemma. -Well get on outta there kid! The redhaired workman steam pistons down the sidewalk, throwing his empty paper lunch bag into the street and waving his thick dust arms into the preautumn breeze. -Get on out afore I call du cops! Now screaming in Sonny’s face -Who are you, man? You ain’t my pops say Sonny still staring with a creeping grin at the floor. -Who am I?! I’m the guy who’s gotta fix what I already fixed, level out and refill what you done. Sonny looks up at the irate man, having a good ½ foot on Sonny’s 6 but thick like a gorilla. -Oh yeah say Sonny I don’t see any orange vest upon your shoulders. The workman looks down and blushes, soon to be yanking out the vest from his belt, awkwardly maneuvering his massive shoulders into the flimsy orange badge that becomes skin taut on the man, he’s inflating his balloon. -Happy now, vandal? says he at the very same moment Sonny’s collar is clamped violently and he’s plucked from the soupy spot with a pfhluk! then thrown onto the adjacent dry slab of sidewalk where his back lands with a thrak! The concrete physician, clad in dusty denim, made the chuck feel so easy, almost motionally extravagant. Luckily Sonny had enough mind to tense his feet in order to keep his shoes footed. -Say man, twas just a goof ya big ol boof Sonny say, but the man’s already grumbling and leveling in his own world of worry. Yonder sparkles a payphone next to a gray convenient store, it’s what Sonny manages to touch after many a heavy step. The quarter and dime clinker down a metal esophagus, down into a steeled belly. Numbers punched appropriately and: -Where in the hell’ve you gone to Sonny? Sonny shrugs and smiles, notices a haggard curlyhaired bum blowing music out steel lips in the weedridden lot anext the store. -Ya know, ma and pa went total nuts since you vanished. Your girl Josey finally got your landlady to let her into your place but you didn’t even take anything. Whatcha been living on for all this time? Another flannel bum jingles the corner store door open and stumbles into daylight with two brown bagged 40 ozs, talking incessantly to himself until the curly bum ceases to blow and interrupts ‘Ole Rieux, you got a peaceful eye.’ -Hello? Flannel bum stands still then interrupts the silence ‘which of my 3 good eyes you talkin’ about?’ whereupon the metal lips buzz once again. -Sonny! You there? -Sure. -Well? -Listen Jacky boy, tell ma I ain’t dead yet, tell pa the same and that I’ll be hollering for the Cowboys come Sunday, tell my sweet Josey she can have all my books cuz I know she likes em and to be a good momma some day, and, Jacky boy, you do what you gotta do and I’m awful proud of you. -But Sonny, wha- -Neveryoumind Jacky boy. You still qb Friday nights? -Last season Sonny, it’s my last sea- -Score one for me, all right? -OK Sonny, I will. -Adios – click and Sonny puts his hands in his pockets, walks toward the crosslegged bums. -Uh, how do men? The flannel bum glances at Sonny then to his shoulder where his piercing black hair sheds scabs and dandruff – Steel lips keeps blowing but stares at Sonny with sideways eyes and inquisitive tilted head, he changes the tune. -See fellas, mind if I sip on one of them chugs you got there? -How come? the flannel bum say wiping flakes lazily onto faded jeaned knees, eyes remain averted. -Cuz I’m thirsty and Sonny removes a hand from a pocket, brings it to his ear and scratches. -How come you thirsty? Shouldn’t you have a job somewhere? Ya know, pushin’ papers. -I reckon so, but I don’t. Shouldn’t you? Flannel bum giggles, metal lips fade on a low note and speaks -Go ahead and give this glass a kiss. Don’t mind foolish Rieux. Flannel Rieux stops giggling and says -Wanna smoke? -Agh, tha’s good. Thankee kindly. -Now get along hobo child, you’re day is come. -Huh? Oh…hrmph…ok…by the way, neither of you got peaceful eyes…they’re, umphugh, sad…just like these say Sonny with a thumb to his eye, a cigarette bemouthed, a fisted hand sweating in a pocket. Last update : 17-01-2008 06:40
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