NEAR HOLLYWOOD, 1948 by Mark J. Mitchell | Art by S. Putnik

NEAR HOLLYWOOD, 1948
By Mark J. Mitchell
Art by S. Putnik
Published Issue 097, January 2022

The outside man

from poverty row

never met his angels on time.

So very bad movies

remained unmade and spools

of lovely, silver acetate

stayed unexposed.

There was a girl

whose smile would have

glittered in the dark and sold

a lot of popcorn

after the newsreel before

the real movie.

He saw her once. He wanted

to shoot just one scene.

He almost spoke

but he was running late

and angels are not—

well, patient. She met

a very nice milkman.

They married.

For no reason at all

she never missed

a B picture.

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 two novels and three chapbooks and two full-length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award. See more by Mark on his site, Facebook and Twitter.

Siena Goldman aka S. Putnik lives in her birthplace, Los Angeles, where she has spent her lifetime so far experimenting with the visual and musical arts. She loves working with pencil, pastel, watercolor, crayon and collage to convey interesting textures, color palettes, and moods in her multi-media artwork. As a 25 year old, she has spent a lot of life in school, uncomfortably switching districts and trying to fit in. Now, she is just stepping out yet again, this time stuck in the squeeze of birth as a young artist.

This is Mark’s Birdy debut, but keep your eyes peeled for more work by this talented writer in the future. In case you missed it, check out S. Putnik’s December Birdy companion artwork to Brian Polk’s My Existential Doctor Herb, Part 17, or head to our Explore section to see more work by this talented artist.