Fall 2011, Volume 11

Poetry by Corey Mesler

In the Nowhere

“Live in the nowhere that you came from,
even though you have an address here.”
                                           —Rumi

The day is clotted.
My maniform meat
rests in my lap, a living
gizmo without sway. I
look up to the clock
whose hands hold me
back and I whisper
as if in volume there is
danger. I whisper
and the dust stirs. The
evening falls like a shed
petticoat. And I am a
half–man, an animal
with animal thoughts,
and the dark tells me can–
didly, to dream, dream, dream.

 Ullage

The new book appears.
There is no parade.
There is only the attenuated
hours I am forced to
think about the new book.
During this time I want
to write something else.
I want to write about what
it would be like if the
new books never appeared.
I want to dream until real
life hits me like a neutercane.

The Soliloquy of the Wind

It whispers now:
    I am sorry I tore
through your neigh–
borhood, uprooted
your neighbor’s tree
and opened his house
like a wound.
    I am quieter now. It is
near the end. Let me
hold you like a swaddled
babe. Let me stand be–
side you like a church.
    Shh. That’s your name
in the chorus of my
air, my darling sur–
     vivor.

 

 

 

BIO: Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published five novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010) and Following Richard Brautigan (2010), Gardner Remembers (2011), 2 full length poetry collections, Some Identity Problems (2008) and Before the Great Troubling (2011), and 3 books of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009), Notes toward the Story and Other Stories (2011) and I’ll Give You Something to Cry About (2011). He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He also claims to have written, “Coronet Blue.” With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.