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