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MARK J. MITCHELL - POEMS

8/19/2017

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Picture
Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull.The Magic War is his latest novel (Loose Leaves Publishing). His work has appeared in the anthologies Good Poems, American Places,Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. He is the author of three full-length collections, Lent 1999 (Leaf Garden Press) and Soren Kierkegaard Witnesses an Execution (Local Gems) and San Francisco: The Guide Dreams (Icarus Books) as well as three chapbooks, Detective Movie (Fermata Publishing), Three Visitors (Negative Capability Press) and Artifacts and Relics, (Folded Word). His novel, Knight Prisoner, is available from Vagabondage Press. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and activist Joan Juster and makes his living pointing out pretty things.
 Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull.The Magic War is his latest novel (Loose Leaves Publishing). His work has appeared in the anthologies Good Poems, American Places,Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. He is the author of three full-length collections, Lent 1999 (Leaf Garden Press) and Soren Kierkegaard Witnesses an Execution (Local Gems) and San Francisco: The Guide Dreams (Icarus Books) as well as three chapbooks, Detective Movie (Fermata Publishing), Three Visitors (Negative Capability Press) and Artifacts and Relics, (Folded Word). His novel, Knight Prisoner, is available from Vagabondage Press. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and activist Joan Juster and makes his living pointing out pretty things.
 

 
 
                       PUBLIC TRANSPORT FUGUE
 

 
                                                A woman on the bus
                                                licks her glass lips.
                                                They taste slightly
                                                of her husband. Anything
                                                else would be a sin.
 
                                                The glass windows
                                                rattle. The bus slides past
                                                retail sins to tempt
                                                her lips. Winterspring fog
                                                keeps her cool and firm.
 
                                                The cord slightly tickles
                                                her finger. A bell sounds
                                                like broken glass. She hides
                                                her sins behind a fixed smile.
                                                She has no choice. None.
 

 

                             THE LAST PHOTO STUDIO
 
                                                            For Suzanne O.
 
                                    He rolls up his fading backdrops
                                    and waits for the truck to come,
                                    remembering high-pitched cries
                                    of babies, soldier’s stone faces, bride’s smiles.
                                    His hands adjust invisible f-stops,
                                    missing the sharp smell of developer
 
                                    and fixatives. That iron gray developer
                                    didn’t care about that. He licked his lips, dropped
                                    a card. He knew he couldn’t be stopped
                                    and ordered the wreckers to come
                                    that day. They were all callouses and smiles.
                                    He was stoic. His wife cried
 
                                    the same way she would cry
                                    when the kids married. That developer
                                    promised wealth, but all those times he said “Smile”
                                    will vanish like today’s raindrops.
                                    Time slides on. He knew this would come.
                                    Technology can never be stopped.
 
                                    So his exposure knowledge and f-stop
                                    lore will fade. No point in crying.
                                    Their life had been good. The one to come--
                                    well, that would just develop
                                    like a picture with a new backdrop.
                                    He knew how to hold onto a smile.
 
 
  
 
                                    He’d paste it on his face. He’d smile
                                    for her. He’d try hard to stop
                                    her tears and they slipped and dropped
                                    to the naked floor. He seldom cried
                                    these days. He’d watch what developed,
                                    wait for the latent image to come.
 
                                    Those scavengers were due to come
                                    back. He’d fix his face, his professional smile
                                    like a proof sheet he’d develop.
                                    Nobody—even if they tried—could stop
                                    this. Babies would still cry
                                    and old men and old tasks would be dropped
 
                                    off the earth. That backdrop would come
                                    apart. All those cries, all those smiles
                                    well, they’d just stop, undeveloped.
 
                                                                       

 
                         GRADE SCHOOL APPARITION
 
 
                                    When water tastes like the first day of school
                                    and the woman on the bus smells like clay,
                                    you pull the cord, step off, let traffic duel
                                    around you. Clues mean to lead you astray.
                                    You follow, willing, today, to be fooled
                                    back to childhood—The hard voices and nun’s
                                    footless habits. Long linoleum halls unspool
                                    out of memory. The words you once prayed
                                    come echoing back as a car horn bites
                                    the air. Jump back to the curb. Breathe and check
                                    your pockets. Keys. Phone. There. Still you recite
                                    Latin words that click like cards from a lost deck--
                                    a tarot that held meaning, today needs none.
                                    You wait for words, for that taste, for the light.
 

                                             FEVER, CHICAGO, 1957
 
                        A strange bed—broad as a field--
                        white knots in the bedspread
                        catch your tiny fists. Four
                        posts, lithe as trees, rise to the ceiling.
                        Everything is outlined in blue--
                        Furniture heavy as the air,
                        dark, black, crackling with light
                        around the edges—gold man
                        on a brown cross. You’re wrapped
                        in an odor of lavender and your lungs
                        fight for air, screaming at nothing.
                        White hair. A blue dress that crinkles
                        as she bends over you—a hot, scented hand
                        on your forehead—her head is enormous--
                        Lips purse. Her white halo shakes.
                        A thin blanket drops on your hot body.
                        —Your favorite, she says. Sleep, she says.
                        You scream until you can’t breathe.
                        Sobs slip into whimpers. A door
                        closes, air is lighter but still hot.
                        You roll across the bedspread
                        kicking away your blanket
                        and breathe into sleep.
 
 

 
                                 TO AN OLD TUNE
 
                                                He forgave your forgiving him
                                    with his last smile—sweetbitter, hard
                                    as his lost tooth. Time called you both
                                    and both answered, agile, abrupt.
                                    You knew that he knew what comes now.
 
                                    You pardon his past. This present
                                    still stings—long silence and short stays
                                    here. Hopeless hospital. Now
                                    it keeps—unsaid. All your unfound
                                    lore lost. Like love. Like his last breath.
 
 
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