Harryette Mullen writes out of a problematized or mongrelized lineage of black writing. Her exploratory, miscegenated aesthetic in Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002) creates a kind of “poethic” as theorized by Joan Retallack. A poethics creates a conspiracy with the reader against hegemonic discourses. Mullen’s poethic opposes American fundamentalism, and her poems create vital, complex engagements with the contemporary world. She critiques rejection of difference. She subverts neoliberal discourses. She highlights the politics of conventional statements embedded in Althusserian ISAs. By forcing examination of the ideologies underlying everyday language, Mullen encourages an everyday poethics for an engaged and questioning form of life.