The Mitchell Collection

Hello newsletter readers - - -

Last week, I finished working with a newish editor I've been collaborating with for new stories for submission as well as "The Mitchell Collection."

I've had this semi-done for a few years now, so I felt it was about time to dust it off, look it over, and get it in the hands of a professional to see if it's worth sending to actual publishing houses. They loved it, which always helps when sending something like a collection of around 100 pages of short fiction, poetry, and art out into the world.

Below, I'd like to share three pieces that will be in the collection. Of course, if anything comes up regarding the collection getting accepted somewhere, you'll be the first to know. Thank you for reading and your support.

...Mitchell

Gardenias and Cowboys

​Under a sky of molten silver, Gardenias sat on the edge of his porch, an old guitar, far older than him, between his legs. He picked it up and played something he couldn't remember the name of, the notes dancing with the warm twilight breeze. The sun had set, casting a wash of purple and orange hues over the desert's Joshua Trees, creosote bush, Mojave yucca, and globemallows.

In the distance, a lone figure on horseback approached, kicking up the lazy red dust. Jedediah, a lost cowboy obsessed only with the horizon, reined in his horse by Gardenias fence. He would later write to his friends: "Gardenias song had pulled him in."

"You've got a steady hand," Jedediah said, tipping his sweat-stained hat.

Gardenias looked up. "Time is a teacher if you let it.”

Jedediah dismounted.

“Looking for purpose,” Jedediah stated. “Seen any around here?”

Gardenias smiled, laying his guitar against his shack's dry, dusty wall.

"You're not the first cowboy to find himself lost in these parts,” Gardenias told him. "You won’t be the last. Won’t ever be a final gust of wind or siren song around here. As long as the coyotes are still around.”

Jedediah sighed, comforted, but still suspended in an air of anger, annoyance, and undirected blame. Then Gardenias did a strange thing: he began to tell in detail every aspect of Jedediah’s journey. Gardenias made clear everything he'd felt on cutbacks, dead-end deals, and towns filled with familiar and not so familiar faces. And as Gardenias did this as the stars emerged like glistening diamonds above them as they had on Jedediah's trail; as they had for him deep in love and loss in the back rooms of bars, hotels, motels, and even back home; as they had from the sin of money and the rebirth and quick death of whiskey.

When the tale ended, Jedediah was silent.

“The desert is waiting,” Gardenias advised him. “Live your life with life. Take experience when it's given and try to live as one with those who have come before you. What you receive can be like water to a cactus in its last hour or that final shot of tequila that finally puts the drunk of the town down. Life can be molded, transformed, and used however you want: an easel, a blank page, a piece of clay or play dough, or nothing at all. Make it make you, and you it. Three pieces given, son, but not always all used.”

Jedediah thanked him, not knowing all for what exactly, and rode off again as Gardenias began to play his guitar, both of them following the song of the desert, seeking destiny among the cacti and tumbleweeds, angels and hot cakes.

When We Almost Had It

After everything fell apart,

after the cops gave up,

and the school teachers seized their

long-deserved break;

after the firefighters ran out of water,

and the politicians dried out

their holy words

unable to quell

the thinning rage under

neath every passive like, retweet, and re-post,

there was an immense quiet.

With the right pair of ears

and the right

state of mind,

you could almost hear the shift

of two becoming one, and

one ascending

into everyone.

Yet, as soon as someone asked,

How long can this last?

our unified moment

vanished,

and the hills returned

to crying.