Secret Keeper by Mark J. Mitchell

I live for one thing: I’m a line of text.

The words are sacred to people long gone.

Their gods still live. I’ve met them. They will come

with early morning to remind my wet

tongue how their names are said and the few words

I can’t forget. Must not. I live on curds

the farmer leaves for merit, and he lets me

sleep with his cows sometimes. I wonder

what those words mean. Then I wake under

hard stars and listen for what gods say next.

Bio

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. A new collection, Something to Be and a novel are forthcoming. 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, he’s looking for work again. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and four full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award. Titles on request. A meager online presence can be found here. A primitive web site now exists here. I sometimes tweet @Mark J Mitchell_Writer