Tag: Mark J. Mitchell

For Four Years, At Least

By Mark J. Mitchell

For Lyle Grosjean and those of us who walk

None shall kill when all are completed.         

—Kenneth Patchen

Our boots—
brown, heavy and clunky
as gray cinderblocks—
can rest at the backs
of our cluttered closets unless
bright wild flower hills
call us by name.

The green room—
new, shiny, its long table
still wrapped in clear plastic—
will stay empty. No pink
flesh will feel the bite
of silver needles. The window
will be blurred by dust. No one
need witness human sacrifice.

We will not walk
across the red bridge
on blue mornings except
to share quiet joy in each
the other’s company, watching the white
city and the green hills—
our walks yellow and bright
as summer.

For four years, at least,
the machinery of death
will be left to rust.

 

 Mark J. Mitchell’s novel, The Magic War, appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied  at Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. He lives with his wife, Joan Juster, making his living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco. Since 1978, he has walked from San Francisco to San Quentin, with a likeminded group, each time an execution has been scheduled.

Photo by Tanya Nevidoma on Unsplash.

The Sestina of Forbidden Words

By Mark J. Mitchell

                                                For Ruth Hulbert

 

In the dream you’re vulnerable—
small, twisted on yourself—a fetus
waiting for limbs to awake to their diversity,
still unsure of your transgender.
As yet, you have no sense of entitlement,
just a fear, unnamed, somehow science based.

It’s cold where you dream. Evidence is based
on fake mathematics—vulnerable
to logic, but it isn’t entitled
to the attention you give a fetus
(and you’re small—an embryo, ungendered
And stranded in a diverse city).

Your unshaped hands explore the diversity
of cold walls and flowers. Your science is based
only on touch. Not blindness but a trance. Gender
calls your name, telling you how vulnerable
you are—naked, unprotected as a fetus
in the cold, with no sense of entitlement.

Still, you remember books. You know what titles meant
and the cold splendor of word’s diversity.
You would explore the city but a fetus
has no mobility—no evidence to base
direction. Everything is vulnerable
to mistakes—empty eyes, small hands—gender

perhaps. Of course, you’re asleep. You’re transgendered,
fluid as snow about to melt. Your entitlement
runs downhill like water. It’s vulnerable
as a newborn—raw cells, fresh from the diversity
of division. You try to stand on a science base
but there is no footing for a frozen fetus.

Still, it’s your dream and your brave fetus
isn’t awake slipping between transgenders
to search a city for evidence to base
your journey. Your only defense—entitlement
to life and death and this cruel diversity
leaves you puzzled. Frightened. Vulnerable

You’re a poor fetus in a cold world, entitled
to be untransgendered, trapped in fake diversity.
You must stay faith-based—forever vulnerable.

 

Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War, was published in 2017 by Loose Leaves Publishing. Having studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock, Mark’s work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. He has also published three his chapbooks and a novel: Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics, and Knight Prisoner. He lives with his wife, the activist Joan Juster, and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco. He has been active in politics all his life.

Photo credit: Joe Flood via a Creative Commons license.

On a Theme by Leonard Cohen

By Mark J. Mitchell

 

I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons.

            —”First We Take Manhattan”

I’m battered by the blindness of our weapons.
Boys stare at screens and tickle switches.

Death drops from the sky
onto archaic altars.

Isaac screams. Ishmael burns.
Rachel weeps for her children.

From the empty office, ritual words:
We sincerely regret collateral damage.

Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks—Three Visitors, Lent, 1999 and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisoner are available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. He lives with his wife, the activist Joan Juster, and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.

Photo credit: Doug Bowman via a Creative Commons license.