FOUR POEMS
By Corey Mesler
Riverside
Sunset over the Mississippi.
The mud slides
toward water.
It only wants what you and I
want. A return.
It grows dark. The river seems
to bend outward.
|
Breakdown on the Eve of War
I’ve had it up to here with having it up to here. Gall rises in me, or is it bile. I mix up my humors. Medicine makes me sick. The fix-it men in Washington make me sick. The world twists sluggishly, a marble, once so bright and blue, spinning in oil. |
Another Story
There was a story
so I told it.
Some people gathered
around. My
doorway was blocked
by ambition.
I used words to get
the thing going.
Some people understood.
Others looked
for hints about their own
lives. I wrote it
all down.
I’m sending it out now like
a wave, like an
annunciator.
|
Accretion
Anxiety builds up in me like too much calcium, a small stone, that, when kicked, changes everything, & turns me, like a Gorgon’s curse.
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END
Corey Mesler has published prose and/or poetry in Contrary, Pindeldyboz, Mars Hill Review, Pikeville Review, Arkansas Review, Center, Small Press Review, Jabberwock Review, Rattle, Orchid, Quick Fiction, Timber Creek Review, Green Egg, Poetry Motel, Raintown Review, Potomac Review, Poetry Super Highway, Big Muddy, Slant, Wilmington Blues, Drought, Rockhurst Review, Wavelength, Lilliput Review, Pearl, Aurorean, Lucid Moon, Heeltap, Sunny Outside, Fish Drum, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Mid-American Poetry Review, Independence Boulevard, Midday Moon, Turnrow, Now Here Nowhere, Dust, Cherotic Revolutionary, Cotyledon, Buckle &, Iodine, Snakeskin (England), Flashpoint, Freewheelin’ (England), Pitchfork, Anthology, Poet Lore, Spillway, The Pegasus Review, Reverb, Kimera, Thema, Kumquat Meringue, Lonzie’s Fried Chicken, Both Sides Now, Electric Acorn (Dublin), Razor Wire, Gin Bender, Blue Unicorn, Black Dirt, The Spirit that Moves Us, Wind, Red Rock Review, Art Times, Concrete Wolf, Memphis Magazine, Rhino, Visions International, and others. He has a chapbook of poems, Piecework, from the Wing and a Wheel Press, and work in the anthologies Full Court: A Literary Anthology of Basketball (Breakaway Books), Pocket Parenting Poetry Guide (Pudding Press), Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure (New World Press) and Smashing Icons (Curious Rooms).
He recently won the Moonfire Poetry Chapbook Competition and his chapbook, Chin-Chin in Eden, has just been published by Still Waters Press.
One of his short stories was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel.
His novel-in-dialogue, Talk, was published by Livingston Press in 2002.
He’s been a book reviewer (for The Commercial Appeal, BookPage, The Memphis Flyer, Brightleaf), fiction editor (for Ion Books/raccoon), university press sales rep, grant committee judge (for The Oregon Arts Council), father, and son. With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores.
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