MARK J. MITCHELL - POEMS

Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. It has also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. He is the author of two full-length collections, Lent 1999 (Leaf Garden Press) and Soren Kierkegaard Witnesses an Execution (Local Gems) and two chapbooks, Three Visitors (Negative Capability Press) and Artifacts and Relics, (Folded Word). His novel, Knight Prisoner, is available from Vagabondage Press and two more novels are forthcoming: A Book of Lost Songs (Wild Child Publishing) and The Magic War (Loose Leaves). He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster.

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                                                      OZYMANDIAS SMILES
 
                                    I woke from seeing long and level sands
                                    stretched taut over fragments of stone almost
                                    grains themselves. A forgotten face is lost
                                    to light: Nose, eyes, beard, crown—gone. What began
                                    in ruin has gone past ruin: Cool dune ghost
                                    under footnoted moonlight. A thin trail
                                    of commentary leads me past three failed
                                    exams. Answers erased themselves. Uncrossed
                                    eyes and teacups circle a past tense smile.
                                    There are no creatures patrolling these grounds.
                                    My hand escapes the sheets, groping around
                                    for nothing at all. Do I make a sound?
                                    Space is deserted. A broken line stands
                                    Behind a statue’s tooth. It won’t be found.
 

                           TRANSPORTED ANGELS
 
 
 
                                    They don’t get used
                                    to this sky:
 
                                    Blue
                                    as a pregnant virgin--
 
                                    Heavy
                                    with reluctant moisture--
 
                                    Where
                                    sparks snap off street cars
 
                                    And birds
                                    forget how to fly.
 
                                    They file onto buses--
                                    without paying their fare--
                                   
                                    just to hide from it.

 
                                                DAILY REPORT
 
                                    It’s simple to forget morning
                                    already absent from rear-view mirrors.
 
                                    Afternoons have no voice,
                                    unless baseball is played below the sun.
 
                                    A littered table is all that’s left
                                    this evening—names escape lightly
 
                                    as butterflies. Dreams are scattered
                                    like pennies from a child’s broken bank.
 

 

​                                     SHADOW SONNET
 
 
                                                Because I’ve missed you so long I won’t say
                                                I miss you. Whenever I see my face
                                                refracted through whisky—then I miss you.
                                                I’ll tune my guitar and miss you. Through years
                                                without you—I miss you. I can’t undo
                                                anything now. Lent passes. Easter nears
                                                and I remember white nights and pub crawls.
                                                I see your small shape through a long shadow
                                                when the spring sun rises and the moon falls.
                                                I remember you crowing while you show
                                                me some new-drawn myth (ignoring my
                                                small victories with a smile). And we would do
                                                the great dance of drinking, of drugs and lies
                                                and collapse and laugh and oh, I miss you.
 

​                                      FIRE
 
 
She says her husband
smelled smoke and left.
 
She never knew what kind
of smoke—tobacco, sulfur
oak or hickory--
 
just that he smelled it
and went out
 
like a candle.