Seeker Magazine - March 2005
Corey Mesler
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Biography
Corey Mesler is the owner of Burke's Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country's oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals including Rattle, Pindeldyboz, Quick Fiction, Cranky, Thema, Mars Hill Review, Poet Lore and others. He has also been a book reviewer for The Memphis Commercial Appeal. A short story of his was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, published by Algonquin Books. Talk, his first novel, appeared in 2002. Nice blurbs from Lee Smith, John Grisham, Robert Olen Butler, Frederick Barthelme, and others. He has a new novel, We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, due out in 2005 from Livingston. His latest three poetry chapbooks are Chin-Chin in Eden (2003) and Dark on Purpose (2004) and The Heart is Open (2005). He also claims to have written "Islands in the Stream." Most importantly, he is Toby and Chloe's dad and Cheryl's husband.
In Chapter One
I rode
a quick horse
to an
unsavory
marriage,
never
stopping to
consider
whether
the lightning
that splashed
around me
was
dangerous
or of my own
making
and hence
even more
dangerous, the
product
of my reckless
speed
and my own
wavering, yet
holy,
hankering.
Top of the Page.
I Wanted to Call Your Eyes
I wanted to call your eyes
limpid
but I had to look it up first.
Pellucid.
Good enough. When I looked
into your limpid eyes
I found that I could not continue.
Top of the Page.
Late
In my backyard
moonlight gilds the silver slide,
the swingset rusted with disuse.
I stand naked at my kitchen window
the dog doing his business,
the house lights low.
Behind me everyone is asleep.
Have I lived that long?
Questions the answers
will have to lie about.
And who the hell left
the red wheelbarrow out all night?
It's not perfect but we're
gonna call it my life.
The dog scratches at the door
meaning she's through.
Top of the Page.
Don't Call Me
The lines are drawn,
down for the count.
I'm your last number.
The wall is fairly
covered in pencilings.
I wait all night for the
right response. The
buzzing is not just in
my head. There's one
more thing to say
about the telephone.
We try to say it. The
language of ex-lovers
falters and stops.
The phone almost rings.
Top of the Page.
I Dream of You
for Sue Cook
I dream of you
and wake full of your fresh skin,
ripe like the spring is ripe,
and so close I
can taste your tattoos,
the ones that are maps,
to your verdant secret places, yes.
Top of the Page.
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The Day I Got my Hat
I went out into the world, the
often forbidding world.
I went shopping, at the mall,
the often endemic mall.
I ate a lunch, a humble sandwich.
I went to a party, a party of old
friends, that fishing line
backwards, that tether. I sat at
table and conversed,
as if I were extrovert, a new man.
And, doctor, it's true.
Now I am a man who wears a hat.
Top of the Page.
The Leathers' House, Where we Gathered when Young
We listened to Cream
and Fever Tree.
Sandra taught me to play
Hearts.
The room was small yet
seemed a kingdom
to me.
Just a bedroom made
rec room,
just a cenacle.
The days of our youth went
by like the
Merry-Mobile.
Still, in recollection, it seems
I went there
for forming, went there for
the connection
the human heart solicits.
We listened to The Doors and
King Crimson.
Once I kissed Sandra, once
she sat on my lap.
Her older sister and I were
closer.
So that, when Sandra died, there
was still the
thread, not Ariadne's, not exactly
Ariadne's.
There was
still the glow of that small room,
there is still the blood heat
of that small room,
where we all
gathered, pledging our primitive troth.
Top of the Page.
St. George
You say the lance is
strong enough
to hang your cast-off garments
on. I say, bend
over that radiator, love, this
one night is just
the beginning. Later, getting
dressed you paused
to kiss my shoulder. My good
St. George, you say.
You say, I have to go back now,
rekennel the dragon.
Top of the Page.
Resurrection
"We are the forgeries.
We are the fakes."
---Bill Knott
The mirror lies.
The lake is a muddy remembrance.
I forget what your
face is. You re-
present something unreachable.
Tomorrow
is a protuberance.
I look for you in the sheets, where
the crumbs have fallen,
the misbegotten words.
I look for you in the wind, the wind-
ing sheet.
Top of the Page.
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Dear Dad,
I dreamt last night of a family reunion so large you were still alive. And you had a magic Polaroid which took pictures of what should be there. We were all anxious for what developed. Then, suddenly, you were Mark, my brother older by 6 years, a father figure apparently.
When I awoke the dream was still there, like something left on my nightstand by the imps of the perverse. I turned it over in my hand and it had changed. I held it to the light, the soft, human light, relishing its newness, a picture, too, of what, Father, I want the world to approximate.
Top of the Page.
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(Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved by Corey Mesler - No reproduction without express permission from the author.)
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Letter to the Author: Corey Mesler