Do not be afraid.
This is required. We must
show you the instruments.
Here is the page—see?
It’s cool and white
as a porcelain teapot.
And these are the verbs, neatly
stacked. You think they bite. They
don’t, but they sting a bit.
We keep the names here.
All of those things you don’t
quite see are behind the mirror.
We are not cruel men.
We’ll just leave them
on the table. You may look.
The night is not long.
~ Mark J. Mitchell
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”. His chapbook, “Three Visitors” has recently been published by Negative Capability Press. “Artifacts and Relics”, another chapbook, is for hcoming from Folded Word and his novel, “Knight Prisoner”, was recently published by Vagabondage Press. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster.
Featured artwork: The Show Must Go On (digital collage printed on archival paper), by Mohsin Shafi.