 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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