Three Poems by Corey Mesler

I matter

All my doctors are retiring.
The hall before me is as
white as blindness. I am
tottering forward, just enough
left of me to be called matter.

Waiting for the Sun

 “They’re selling postcards of the hanging”

When it comes it will be a day
of celebration, not just here,
in the country he shat upon,
but worldwide, except in certain
dark corners where men are
like spiders, or asps. It will be
like opening a window painted shut
years ago by the forces of smash
and ruin. I can see that window.
Now it’s murky. But I can almost
see through it, a spirit, a glow.

Sex Poem

She was young and lovely and I only
wanted to be near her so that
her beauty might rub off on me
and make me a better man, one not
given to lust or need or even
that final embarrassment, the sex poem.



COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Lunch Ticket, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 50 books of fiction and poetry. His newest book, A Troubling of Goldfish, is from Big Table Books. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.