Mark J. Mitchell

Notes on Tea From the Drowned City

Beyond the walls, low rolling hills

grow yellow blooms. Come Fall, they went

vermillion, ready. Plucked by hand

on half-moon nights, young girls would sort

the perfect flowers, making tea.

The only tea the great ones drink

On the back of the hill

there are brown and green leaves.

The small girls stoop to pick

only choicest, the soft

supple ones, to take home

to their mothers for their tea.

A Parable of Apples

She drops

green-gold fruit

to slow down

running children.

“Soft for cider,”

she calls,

“firm ones

for school pies.”

Then she takes

her first step

up her leaning

ladder and plucks red.

Before dropping

a full sack

to the boy below,

she looks up.

Shining red and

and perfect, she stretches.

Is this sin?

Her bite’s quick and sharp.

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Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He’s the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. A novel, A Book of Lost Songs, is due out in 2025.He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco. Find him on Twitter,  Facebook, or his website.