Mark J. Mitchell
A Book Ghost
You never quite see him.
You think you do—sometimes
there’s a hint of motion
on the other side of the stacks.
You spot a touch of tartan
trailing past green bindings.
You never lay eyes on a person.
Still, he’s there, every day.
He checks all the due dates
on out of print books.
When they've been forgotten
just long enough, he checks them out
so that the pages will know daylight again.
Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks— Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisoner are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. He lives with his wife Joan Juster and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.
A Book Ghost
You never quite see him.
You think you do—sometimes
there’s a hint of motion
on the other side of the stacks.
You spot a touch of tartan
trailing past green bindings.
You never lay eyes on a person.
Still, he’s there, every day.
He checks all the due dates
on out of print books.
When they've been forgotten
just long enough, he checks them out
so that the pages will know daylight again.
Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks— Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisoner are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. He lives with his wife Joan Juster and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.