Two Poems by Nancy Mitchell

Nancy Mitchell

Nancy Mitchell

Nancy Mitchell is a 2012 Pushcart Prize winner and the author of two volumes of poetry, The Near Surround (Four Way Books, 2002) and Grief Hut (Cervena Barva Press, 2009). Her third book, The Out-of-Body Shop is forthcoming in 2018. Her poems have appeared in, Agni, Columbia College Literary Review, Green Mountains Review, Poetry Daily, Tar River Review, Thrush, Tulane Review, and Washington Square Review among others. She is the co-editor of and chief contributor to Plume Interviews I (2017). Mitchell teaches at Salisbury University in Maryland and serves as the Associate Editor of Special Features for Plume.

Into The Out-of-Body Shop
 
Slipped on ice
            in the grocery store   
 
                          parking lot rose
   
            like a helium party
 
                balloon clutch             constellation 

 
                                                                                    of oranges on black

 
            asphalt                         ringing                         fallen 

 
                        body                          passersby                         ants

 
                                                      rallying around a scattered 
 
 
picnic                                                             floating       in  a blizzard

 
                                                           of static           like an embryo

 
 
trailing                                                             a cut                         umblical 

 
 
                                                cord             for no          idea             have

 
                                                                                        no idea         how   long

 
                                                                                    in       soundbooth  silence

 

 

Intake Invoice
 
Female. Age: undisclosed.
Triggering Incident: Fifth grade, school
bus driver grandfatherly, smelled
 
of soap and rising
dough. Called her chica
 
bonita, asked about books
she liked. His hand—
—blue veins, skin thin
as tracing paper—slid
up her blouse, calloused edge
 
of his thumb nicking
her nipple. The whole time
he was smiling. Typical
 
symptoms: weightlessness,
sense of shrinking..
 
Exit Point: black hole
in his eye. God
Hole she called it.
 
Static/Deafness: yes.
Time out of body: unknown