| Vision is One Way to Use the Light The light went out in my head. It was as dark as sin. Neighbors came to see what they could do and what they could take away from my nest. Morning came and then the rest of day. The light in my head stayed off. A priest came with all his baggage. A doctor came and took my pulse. Now I have no light and no pulse. My family stood be- hind me so as not to get hit by flying shrapnel. Slowly I am acclimating to the dark. Soon I will write this on a rock with a phosphorous pen. Soon I will emerge from the cocoon, daylight making my eyes bleed. |
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| Corey Mesler |
| Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. His novel, "Talk: A Novel in Dialogue", was released in 2002. His second novel, "We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon", came out in January 2006. He has also published numerous chapbooks and one full-length poetry collection, "Some Identity Problems". He has been nominated for a Pushcart numerous times, and one of his poems was chosen for "Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac". With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com. |
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| You Start a Story You start a story. Somehow it ends up being about Adam and Eve. I only wanted to write about my family, their woes, their peccadilloes, you say to no one at all. Where did this garden come from? Where these naked pilgrims? I have no time for the peregrinations of first timers. And this, what’s this in the corner, curled like a question mark, splitting the air with a tongue like a diacritical mark? You want to forget the story and start something else. But it gets a hold of you. It gets in your blood. You start to consider it. It’s really not a bad tale, you say to no one at all. It’s about redemption, see, and about families, after all, families that lie and slay and cavort with the living underworld. In a way, you say, this is my family, also. |
| I Wear the Mask I Forged in Life That’s me with the soda pop eyewear, the one behind the counter counting on something to save him from himself. That’s me with the gun under the fake cast, the cast of thousands, the play called My Life. And that’s me at the end of the line with my hand out, hoping for some small thing, valuable as all of time, shining like my best nightmare. Call me thief but call me when the time is rife. That’s me with the smirk for a mask. Me with the rubber children. Me with the picture of you on my new t-shirt. There’s something about me you like but you can’t put your ring finger on it. I take you along with your possessions, possessing you as easily as a second story man. That’s the second story, man, the one I do not tell until the end, when words are finally used up, the whopper, the one that kills. |