Fire
 
She says her husband
smelled smoke and left.

She never knew what kind
of smoke—tobacco, sulfur,
oak or hickory—

just that he smelled it
and went out

like a candle.

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. He lives with his wife, the activist Joan Juster, and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.