The Poetry Of...
Corey Mesler.......................................................
The Medicine Bottle
The medicine bottle
on the counter
is a counter,
a register of things
forgettable.
You go there expecting
comfort, the
kind of friend you can
call at midnight
and say futilitarian
to. The medicine bottle
is a mouth
cursing you, loving you,
a mouth
like your last, best
lover. The one who would
take you in,
swallow you, and
wrap you in deadly daydreams.
Ring-a-Lievio
Line them all up
and set them
on fire.
Let the bodies fall
where bodies
fall. Let the other
team collect
whom they can.
An eye for an eye,
a tooth for
a mouthful. Your
child for mine.
The pieces left over
will be used
to build new players.
The new players
will all be fireproof.
There will be
new ways to destroy them.
An Early Evening Poem
This is an early evening poem
while most of its siblings
are early morning.
There is a difference in the, how
should we say it,
the texture of an early evening
poem. When I was a
young man, my
drawers were full of middle-
of-the-nighters, dark,
fuliginous, rooty things,
poems that you kept from your
sister, poems
about your sister. This, though,
friend, is a pal, a
patch, a galloglass.
Don't worry if you haven't even
read this far-” no one's
going to call you on it.
It's only an early evening poem,
sweet and dim and
gibbous, almost a flicker, really.
Almost a glim.
