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Susan Mitchell

Soprano Tough Orange

With a stutter and a sneeze,
that’s how, with catch as
catch can, with a quick
spritz of cologne, a shake
of good-luck charms. Where they 
can, that’s where, and if there 
is a better place than
along this highway, how would
a flower know? Like Day-Glo
bunnies they catch on, like a craze
of orange balloons trailing
cars of newlyweds, they honk
the byways and center lane.
A highway goes faster than any 
flower in the world, knocks
heads off deer, sheers rock
clean through. A seed takes off
littering commotion tizzies
and mango pops at every 
service plaza. Because they grow
out of wrappers blown
from fries and Mr. Fizzies 
because they blare
everywhere, let me not
take for granted a million 
bells and whopper torches,
let me not forget 
each carrot thrust—though how
something ends is as
mysterious as how it begins.
Blessed be orange for its brash 
and brazen, for its bold
me too, me too.
Blessed be orange because it
despises nothing. In its honor 
let me not forget the acrid
smoke of bloom and bust.
Boombox of colors, promiscuous 
music blaring station to station,
let me mercy the seed
that does not orange, that lands
crooked or double spins
through an open window
to swizzle my arm on the wheel
with its C above high C.

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Cover art by Ralph Lazar

Volume 41, Number 4

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Writer’s Notebook

Writer’s Notebook—No Ruined Stone

Shara McCallum

Writer’s Notebook—No Ruined Stone

Answering such queries typically falls to novelists. But, being a poet, I felt compelled to ask poetry to respond.

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