Forgotten Ground Regained
Mitch's Choice
Les Mankey, D.D.S., dreams he plays the final round as his dog Mitch.
Steely, Mitch staresat the high-stakes hangmanpuzzle, perplexed.After all his anguish,his throat only throwsthe same old stale, one-note groan—
Ruff! Rough!
What did he figure he’d find?Mutty minds cannot crackthe two-leggéd language.That heaven-honeyed symphony swirlsfar too high—too filigreed—for him to fully hear.Ooo, sorry, Sajak saysand pats his head.
Now for your fate, but first,your unwon winnings.
Flood-lights flash:posh sedans, pyramids of cash,a marble-larded mansioncaressed by congalines of laughy ladies.The floods flicker,crash. Lightning crazesthe thunder-thickened black.
Quiet, audience. Quiet, please.
Now for your fate.Mitch wheezes wobbly,somehow sweatingin the fetid blanket of his fur.Pat produces a tan tubefrom his sport coat, splitsgreen wheels of wax,unrolls the scroll.
Death or the dragon!
This poem is an "outtake" from Richard Mankey's The Book of Mankey.
The Book of Mankey is a chapbook that consists of narratively interlocking poems about a middle-aged man, a dentist named Les Mankey. When a series of losses brings up the pain of an unhealed trauma—the death of his wife and infant daughter a decade earlier—Mankey tries to run away from his life. Once in the “wilderness” of a state park, Mankey unwittingly begins a spiritual quest on which he faces the question of evil and the nature of suffering. Why do bad things always seem to happen to him? Is there an underlying force guiding his life, or is it only chance and choice that have brought him to this point?
The poems in this collection are written in three modes—third person narrative poems, dramatic lyrics, and dream poems written in alliterative verse. During his quest, Mankey meets various characters who each have their own views on life, suffering, and God. These characters speak in dramatic lyrics and monologues, each lyric or monologue presenting a distinct temperament, point of view, diction, and poetic form. Tonally, the poems range from serious spiritual inquiry, to dark humor, to campy slapstick.
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