Avarice

When she was small and pink
the library opened huge and rich
as some legendary treasure cave.
It always stayed cool—dark enough
for hiding—light enough to read.
It smelled of time, dust and pages.

When she was ten, she stole her first page—
full of words she didn’t know—from a pink
book, buried in back stacks. She read
it over once, more than once. Words were rich,
blunt with secrets. She wasn’t old enough
to learn them. She carried it to her cave

above the tideline. Placed it, soft, in her cave
chest, with white shells and stones. More pages
followed. She grew and stretched enough
to know those words were dirty. Her pink
face flushed red. She learned where they lived, rich
dark stacks, where it was hard to read

but she wouldn’t get caught. She read
and learned tricks. Dragged boys to her cave.
Money found her. She grew rich
and bought that cliff. Boxes of pages
swelled. She coded them—blue, pink,
green. She knew she’d never have enough

words—even dull ones. There were enough
books to inhale. Too many to read.
Her skin grew firm, taut, then slack, less than pink.
She shored up and furnished that cave
and decided to take a single page
from each library book to enrich

her hidden hoard. Time, like tides, stole riches
and lovers. There remained enough
to shelter her and endless pages—
her treasure. By moonlight, she’d read
this one in French—or one about caves
and the colors of stones—the black one and the pink.

She mined the rich veins and tried to read
just enough before words broke off. Her final cave
held her and treasured pages, boxed—Red. Blue. Pink.

Angel Collectors

The angel collectors wait where stairways cheat.
Steps rise almost to a door then twists down
following voices you can’t hear. You’ll see
them some nights, flipping through stars. They’re around
at times you ignore, sighing. They repeat
unsayable names, hoping that their sound
calls angels. Collectors play, but they cheat
each raise. Almost twisting doors, they fall down.

Some angels enjoy the stairway game—
able to hide when they want and get caught
in time. Eternity’s always the same
and paths leading nowhere, or staying sought
diverts them. They’ll toy with stars, play with rain
and steal haloes. People are jokes
they forgot after Eden. Cute angels leap through frames,
tossing terror lightly, at those untaught
humans dancing up strange stairways. That game
stays new. Hiding is fun. They won’t stay caught.

When I was in Catholic grade school as a child, I had the same nun as my religion teacher for three years running. One of the things Sister William Anne taught us was to say a Hail Mary every time we heard a siren. One of us asked, “But what if it’s a cop chasing a bad guy?”

She responded, “Well, the officer may be in danger, and if someone committed a crime then they sinned and they need your prayer.”

Now, as an aging Zen practitioner, whenever I hear a siren, I automatically recite the Tara mantra (Om tari, tutari, turi svaha), because someone is suffering and needs compassion.

I live in a city. I recite that mantra a lot.

Thank you, sister, wherever you are.

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.

More on Mark J. Mitchell’s work can be found on our Links page.