3 Poems
by Corey Mesler
Toiler in the Elysian Fields
Heaven has its own set of problems.
So few of you can understand.
See, at the foot of the ladder,
there are jokes and sandwiches.
I’m constantly interrupted in my work.
I tell the gardeners to stop the
research into alien life-forms.
I reach for a star that’s come loose,
hanging by a gossamer smile.
I look over my shoulder but I know
the Big Guy is busy with a war
somewhere. He can’t get enough of wars.
I start to slip the star into my pocket
but the honor code stops me.
I spit on the back of it. It will
hang that way for another century or so.
By that time it will be, of
course, somebody else’s longlasting problem.
Cats
“Life is a zoo in a jungle.”
- Peter DeVries
The orange cat
is called Orange Kitty.
The white
White Kitty.
I can’t remember the
name of the black cat,
or the one
with the mottled
fur. They all move about
in the street
before our house
like spilled mercury.
Only Orange Kitty
comes when called, talks
to you, rolls
onto her back for her due.
The others
are aloof,
the way I’m used to cats
being. It’s a
veritable backwash of cats,
ever since
those sexy, young Sirens
moved in
across the street.
They come out sometimes,
too, sinuous and
wily, with their
impossibly flat stomachs
on view
beneath their shifts.
They roil about,
not unlike their cats.
Things heat up.
It’s a jungle out there,
I tell my wife,
and she gently
admonishes me: close the
drapes, put
your animal
back inside its cage.
Agoraphobia: Explanation 8
I became
so
self-centered
that
I began
to
spin
in place.
<<>>
| Corey Mesler has published prose and/or poetry in Rattle, 3711Atlantic, StorySouth, Canopic Jar, Contrary, Pindeldyboz, Mars Hill Review, Pikeville Review, Arkansas Review, Stirring, Red River Review, Center, Small Press Review, Jabberwock Review, 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 recently won the Moonfire Poetry Chapbook Competition and his chapbook, Chin-Chin in Eden, was recently 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 with raves from Lee Smith, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Stern, Debra Spark, Suzanne Kingsbury, Frederick Barthelme and John Grisham. Corey has been a book reviewer (for The Commercial Appeal, BookPage, The Memphis Flyer), 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. |