TWO PIECES BY COREY MESLER

The Way

Summer drones on. We
make for the city with the
most signage. Along
the way we pick up pilgrims.
Along the way we begin to
devise the articles of exclusion.



The Wall Around Me

I want my shadow
burned onto the
wall around me. I
want this simmering
to seem like inter-
acting, so when
the sirens call
I go further into
the hole. The electric
blood still cycles
through me. The
air still, mostly, re-
vives. Yet I am
quieter and quieter,
a man, surely, but
one down on all fours,
one reduced, one
nearly redacted, a-
lone with his alone,
a tangible, crabby brute.


About Corey Mesler:
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), Following Richard Brautigan (2010), and 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. 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.

I SAID ERICA RHODES

I said "Erica Rhodes" to the shadows
so they'd leave me to my Pinter. I walked about 

because I didn't know where about went. I

needed the kind of reassurance priests arrogate. I

needed to know the conjuration "Erica Rhodes"

worked like the God's best table tennis. I

needed to believe in the beauty,

friends, the beauty of

this final word.

About Corey Mesler:

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the author of four novels, 2 books of short stories, 2 full-length collections of poetry, as well as numerous chapbooks of poetry and prose.  He and his wife own Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN.