Nancy Mitchell
Jennifer Hill-Kaucher
Mark DeCarteret
Dorianne Laux
James Quentin
Joseph Kerschbaum
J.D. Nelson
Jack Conway
Marge Piercy
James R. Whitley
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Nine Flights Down
a windowless, concrete stairwell,
fluorescenced blue, cold iron
handrail, taste of blood
rising to my tongue.
Hard hatted, necks
thick as driven pile posts,
men in yellow sweat stained
white undershirts, guts
straining against a stuck
rusted valve wheel, grunting
between clinched cigarette
stubbed teeth, three faces
dark, deeply creased,
grizzled with beard, eyes
soft as basset hounds,
nodding as I come down.
Saved
Backed both cars out
and spread a tarp
over the garage floor
and dumped the black
plastic trash bags hauled
from your rented room
except for the two you
took on the plane.
Pawn notes for my gifts;
crudely folded origami
birds, powdery pill
cutters, flame smudged
spoons, glass pipes clogged
with resin, twenty-odd empty
valium vials, unopened bank
statements; your ATM hits
two hundred every other day.
Plastic phone shells, tangled
wire guts twisted into a ball.
Quaalude Rules
your t-shirt swears,
and a yellow legal pad page
black markered GOALS
rubber banded around
a St. Jude's prayer
card: To get sober,
To paint, To
love somebody.
One pile to save,
one to throw away,
another to smash
into bits and burn.
Nancy Mitchell is the author of The Near Surround, Four Way Books, 2002.
Her work has been published in such journals as Agni, The Marlboro Review, Salt Hill Journal, Poetry Daily, among others, and is anthologized in Last Call published by Sarabande Books.
She has received fellowships at VCCA in San Angelo, Virginia and Le Moulin a Nef, Auvillar, Gascony, France, as well as an Artist in the Schools grant for Arlington County Schools. She is a guest lecturer for Delmarva Discussions throughout the Delmarva Peninsula.
A professor in the English Department at Salisbury University, Maryland, Mitchell teaches Creative Writing, Poetry Workshops, and courses on the Creative Process in the Honors Program. She has acted as an essay director for graduate students in Poetry in the Stonecoast MFA Program in Maine.
She lives in Salisbury, Maryland, with the screenwriter and filmmaker John Ebert.
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