by Shloka Shankar
Lesson For A Lost Art
“…the endlessly open possibilities tradition offers to invention.”
—Susan Stewart
The Ruins Lesson
Your tools won’t be labeled, they can’t be named.
They are that old. This cracked stone might hold words.
An odd sign might mean hammer. Here, the same
mark shows, although something’s missing. Now look.
You work on this. We don’t know how—or won’t—
tell you. We’re sorry, those are the rules. You heard
them when you took the call. This broken hook
could pull some truth from you. Or pretty lies.
It takes time. Touch the tools. Hold them like bones
you broke as a child. We’re counting on you
to show us how this works. Feel free to try
whatever. We don’t know just what his makes.
Perhaps a song. The perfect surprised shape
of lust. We don’t care. Show us something new.
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. https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/ https://mark-j-mitchell.square.site/ Twitter: @MarkJMitchellSF
Shloka Shankar is a poet and self-taught visual artist from Bangalore, India. She enjoys experimenting with Japanese short-forms and myriad found poetry techniques alike. A Best of the Net nominee and award-winning haiku poet, her poems have recently appeared in ubu., The Purposeful Mayonnaise, Blo͞o Outlier Journal, Angel Rust, and Heron Tree. Shloka is the Founding Editor of the literary & arts journal Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press. Her microchap, Points of Arrival, is forthcoming from the Origami Poems Project. Website: www.shlokashankar.com