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Safe House

by Mark J. Mitchell  

The wing nut
on the dagger tip
spins,
glinting all
out of proportion.
It sings
the song of metal
on metal,
droning
a harsh note.
A door creaks.
No one comes in.

Outside, cars slide past.
Bored drivers ignore
this dark window.
Shadows splash
on the wall,
tossed by headlights.
The curtain rises,
falls
like a spider web.
The blade hits the floor

and nut slips away,
suddenly silly
against the red rug.
A lamp snaps awake,
drowning the night’s
imaginary threats.

In this naked room
morning will be
welcomed.
So what shall we do
while we wait?
First, shuffle all the cards,
then
place your bets.

By Mark J. Mitchell

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up Catholic in southern California. He is fond of baseball, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the film maker and documentarian, Joan Juster,and where he makes his meager living pointing out pretty things.

He studied writing and Medieval Literature at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock, Barbara Hull and Robert M. Durling. His poems have appeared in numerous periodicals over the last thirty-five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, and Line Drives. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks Three Visitors (Negative Capability Press), Artifacts and Relics (Folded Word Press) and Lent, 1999 (Leaf Garden Press) as well as the novels, Knight Prisoner (Vagabondage Press), A Book of Lost Songs (Wild Child Publishing) and The Magic War (Loose Leaves Publishing). His email address: