Corey Mesler
4 poems
**
Open the Door, Horatio
We got evicted
from our new lease on life.
The sign on the door
said, Do not put
signs on this door. My
partner, a chimpanzee,
took it all in stride.
You gotta swing with the
prevailing winds,
he told me. Out on the street
for the first time
I started talking to strangers.
They told me that
what this country really
needs is a religion
based on Monopoly.
So, I filled my backpack with
bologna and said,
Tell em at the ranch that I’ve
gone to the dogs.
Tell em I’m looking for past-
ures of plenty,
one more line, one more queue.
**
Some Ways in Which I Will Always Love You
There are some ways in which
I will always love you.
I am to be pitied for this.
Your perfect cool, the one the
doctors all admire,
is as noxious as nightshade.
I relive it sometimes when I want
to suffer. I go to you in my
dreams and beg for sleep.
I look up your name in the list
of the deadly. There are
some ways in which I will always
love you. Here, I am not talking
about them, you understand.
**
Sick
A slippery fever
and a foreskin infection:
this is the day
of atonement. I make a
sign in front
of the stove. I swear off
soft thinking
and cheeses. Ill at all
hours I am
your infant, the one with
colic, the one
you said you’d love forever,
left to chill on
your doorstep.
**
Today we Have Naming of Names
At the end of your name
nothing but hum.
We have learned to call it
white noise.
Here on the roof half the
birds wear shiteating
grins. I appeal to your better
nature. You wake me
with a cowboy position.
It was so long ago, I say to
the apparition.
Your name, once the be-
ginning of song,
now rattles around in my
brainpan like shot.
It’s all shot.
How can I reclaim you,
ersatz lover,
speak-easy, memory drift?
At the end of your name
nothing but your last name.
**
return to Sawbuck 1.7
**
Corey Mesler has published prose and/or poetry in Turnrow, Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Paumanok Review, Yankee Pot Roast, Monday Night, Elimae, H_NGM_N, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, Poet Lore, Forklift OH, Euphony, Rattle, Jabberwock Review, Dicey Brown, Cordite, Cellar Door, & others.
He has two novels from Livingston Press: Talk: a Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2007). They received nice blurbs from Lee Smith, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Stern, Debra Spark, Suzanne Kingsbury, Frederick Barthelme, Marshall Chapman, George Singleton and John Grisham, among others. He also published 5 chapbooks in 2006, with 2 more due in 2007. His first full-length collection of poems, Some Identity Problems, is due out from Foothills Publishing, in 2007. His poem, “Sweet Annie Divine,” was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. He has been nominated for the Pushcart numerous times.
He's been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.
**
Open the Door, Horatio
We got evicted
from our new lease on life.
The sign on the door
said, Do not put
signs on this door. My
partner, a chimpanzee,
took it all in stride.
You gotta swing with the
prevailing winds,
he told me. Out on the street
for the first time
I started talking to strangers.
They told me that
what this country really
needs is a religion
based on Monopoly.
So, I filled my backpack with
bologna and said,
Tell em at the ranch that I’ve
gone to the dogs.
Tell em I’m looking for past-
ures of plenty,
one more line, one more queue.
**
Some Ways in Which I Will Always Love You
There are some ways in which
I will always love you.
I am to be pitied for this.
Your perfect cool, the one the
doctors all admire,
is as noxious as nightshade.
I relive it sometimes when I want
to suffer. I go to you in my
dreams and beg for sleep.
I look up your name in the list
of the deadly. There are
some ways in which I will always
love you. Here, I am not talking
about them, you understand.
**
Sick
A slippery fever
and a foreskin infection:
this is the day
of atonement. I make a
sign in front
of the stove. I swear off
soft thinking
and cheeses. Ill at all
hours I am
your infant, the one with
colic, the one
you said you’d love forever,
left to chill on
your doorstep.
**
Today we Have Naming of Names
At the end of your name
nothing but hum.
We have learned to call it
white noise.
Here on the roof half the
birds wear shiteating
grins. I appeal to your better
nature. You wake me
with a cowboy position.
It was so long ago, I say to
the apparition.
Your name, once the be-
ginning of song,
now rattles around in my
brainpan like shot.
It’s all shot.
How can I reclaim you,
ersatz lover,
speak-easy, memory drift?
At the end of your name
nothing but your last name.
**
return to Sawbuck 1.7
**
Corey Mesler has published prose and/or poetry in Turnrow, Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Paumanok Review, Yankee Pot Roast, Monday Night, Elimae, H_NGM_N, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, Poet Lore, Forklift OH, Euphony, Rattle, Jabberwock Review, Dicey Brown, Cordite, Cellar Door, & others.
He has two novels from Livingston Press: Talk: a Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2007). They received nice blurbs from Lee Smith, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Stern, Debra Spark, Suzanne Kingsbury, Frederick Barthelme, Marshall Chapman, George Singleton and John Grisham, among others. He also published 5 chapbooks in 2006, with 2 more due in 2007. His first full-length collection of poems, Some Identity Problems, is due out from Foothills Publishing, in 2007. His poem, “Sweet Annie Divine,” was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. He has been nominated for the Pushcart numerous times.
He's been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.
