It was a long drive to the mountains.
It was three days of fever.
Catching up with the old kids.
Three days in bed.
It was roadside lunch and laughter
and three days of flu.
It was getting there and stretching
into past and future pain.
It was all their old faces
then three days of flu for two.
It was only his old face
then sitting beside him knowing
she wouldn’t sit beside him again.
It was three days of illness.
It was a slow drive down mountains
and awkward talk with childhood friends
leading into three sick days.
It was coming home, falling into bed
With the memory of her hand on his,
burning, like three days of flu.
Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications.
He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, like everyone else, he’s unemployed.
He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award.
Titles on request.
A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/
A primitive web site now exists: https://mark-j-mitchell.square.site/
He sometimes tweets @Mark J Mitchell_Writer