April Fool’s Eve & Awaiting Exodus
April Fool’s Eve
Last night—green ring
around a sickle moon.
There was a tree
in front of the door
this morning. It wasn’t
there yesterday.
It disappeared at about
four o’clock this afternoon,
when just about everyone
else vanished too.
Blue ring, tonight
around a sickle moon.
Awaiting Exodus
Those days, it befell, the sky stole away
Some trembled, some sat, wept. Some learned to sing.
When nights fell without a rescue, they prayed
days. It still befell—absent sky. Away
from them, some hero might hear, might save
the light. But—unmarked nights and days—nothing.
Day and day befell with joy stolen away.
They trembled. Stood together. Learned to sing.
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 two 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 website now exists: https://mark-j-mitchell.square.site/. He sometimes tweets @Mark J Mitchell_Writer.