What defines me is a stairway to a sewing room;
inside, bobbins, bright spools of colored thread,
sewing needles sharp as cat’s teeth,
and bolts of fabric, most from a half-price bin.
A woman, a mother, hunches over her Singer,
her right foot working the pedal
like a church organist at evening vespers.
Each breath a prayer, each pinprick
to her thumb a blood sacrifice,
so another life might flourish.
Each stitch a reminder we’re fabricated
from remnants imitating whole cloth.
directs the undergraduate creative writing program at Converse University; and he directed the Low Residency MFA at Converse as well, for 15 years, and continues to teach in that program. He is co-editor with Denise Duhamel of Ice on a Hot Stove: A Decade of Converse MFA Poetry (Clemson University Press, 2021).
Mulkey is also the author of five poetry collections: All These Hungers (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021); Ravenous: New & Selected Poems (Serving House Books, 2014); Toward Any Darkness (2007); Before the Age of Reason; and Bluefield Breakdown.
His poems and essays have appeared widely, including in Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, The Georgia Review, Literary Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and the Southeast Review, among others. And his work has been anthologized in A Millenial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry; American Poetry: the Next Generation; and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volumes I and II.
