Corey Mesler


The Road To Recovery

The signs, the terrible signs.
The curve in the road, the loss of foresight.
The way the hitchhikers hitched up
their skirts. The way
the moon kept denuding the night.
The diner filled with eaters, heavy eaters.
The steering wheel. My lap. Your eyes.
The way the road curved out of sight;
the way it led me on. I am not
in control. I am not driving. I am not the one
who said the road curved out of sight.
The way it all happens as if mapped.
The way it all happens as if mapped.
I am not the one standing in the rain waiting
for the tears to stop. Please, let it stop.
The way the way goes on without stopping
and without a hitch and without us.


I love the red flowers

I love the red flowers
drooping over my backyard fence
on a vine which springs
from the alley
where garbage and misdeed
fester sweetly, though I have
no name for them, the
red flowers, other than poem.
From now on they are called poem.


Things Go

Things go.
That’s the message today.
The Batman beanbag chair, the portable
45 player. Our
Chesapeake Bay retriever
named Mazzie.
Our desire for desire.
The baby listing to the right,
not able to sit yet,
a woman now.
Things go.
You can pretend they don’t. You
can build a house,
move your business, take a photograph.
It’ll be there
in the picture, like a blurred fingerprint
on the edge:
our mortality. Everything, every damn
thing in that picture, goes.


Sleepless and Adulterated

That night, that last night,
there was a brief light,
a light so brief it lit the way
into nothingness the way
a sleeve unravels near a
black hole. I sat and I sat
so still the world was a
frozen lake. Out onto it I skid,
my children turned to
adults by my inattention, my
life trailing behind me like
the sash of my gown. I’ve
grown tired of this lonesome
town. I’ve grown lonesome
in this tired town. I’ve become
a town, moribund and bank-
rupt. That night, that last night,
I was up all hours, cashing
in my chits at the left bank,
hitching my star to a wagon.
It was your face I saw on
the screen in the screening
room. It was your name I
screamed when they took me
away. It was the only way
left to get your retention.
I sat and I sat so still that the
lake opened up like a sore
and hurt me over and over.
I fell hard. The ice kissed me
the way ex-lovers will. I
went black into black. I
woke only long enough to say
to you, tell them I was
only kidding. Tell them that
I never meant what I said,
the part about lying, the part
about lying down and living
anyway, outside of it, outside
of the calm I was born into.


We've Got Life

We’ve got a dog.
We keep her
in the backyard.
We’ve got a TV.
We watch it
most nights.
We’ve got prescriptions.
We take them
when we are lonely
or cold or
looking for answers
We’ve got weather.
We use it sometimes,
as an excuse to do
something, or not.