K Wants to Know What Dolly Means
K loses interest in stories glorifying lives he doesn’t
understand, can’t partake—getting fast food cause it’s cheap
or watching the latest episode of All the Men’s Men
and Is This Politician or Cake? or buying something
out of want, or daydreaming of day trips and sandwiches
made from real plant and pesticide. K works 40 hours
on paper, gets paid for less, at his job longer, doesn’t know
what 9 to 5 means, or meant, or why Dolly would sing
songs of working 8 hours in 8 hours when K works 9, paid
for 7, is away from his family for 11, and has to answer
calls and emails whenever they jingle his JNCO jeans. The
only part of the whole tune tilting K’s cap is the monotonous
tinny bass beat hammering home thrums of factory
mucus muddling its merry way into his chest. He listens
to Dolly dreaming he could work 9 to 5.
Rene Mullen’s work can be found in Santa Fe Literary Review, Blue Collar Review, Poets.org, HAD, Samjoko, and is the winner of the 2023 Charles and Fanny Fay Wood Poetry Prize. Rene also hosted the Pen & Poet Poetry Podcast for a number of years where he interviewed poets from New Mexico and elsewhere.
Rene leads and is available for a number of poetry writing workshops ranging from political and resistance poetry to writing sensual, body positive, and erotic poetry without the cringe to subverting expectations to one-on-one mentorship in writing and reading poetry and performing poetry.
He has been on multiple poetry slam teams, on regional stages, and holds a Political Science MA from UW-Milwaukee and a Creative Writing MFA from Randolph College. Born and raised in the village of Rogers, Connecticut, he calls the Southwest home.