Who’s Driving Your Plane?

You live in a city so big
you have to say its name twice.
It’s confusing, at least from
here, where I write this in pencil
on the side of a locust shell.
I try to picture you in an apartment
in a building built of many
apartments. I see you get up at night
and the only light is the
refrigerator left open. I picture
you writing a poem, one
made of sinews and hope.
And then it goes blank. Blank until
I wake to find you here
in my head, your words like mites
peppering me. I say, Baby,
in your glasses you look like Grace
Kelly. I say, I look at your
picture just to yelp. You write back,
I am moving, moving.
Someday I will hear what you said.
Someday I will rest, rest.
Sincerely, Me, a Body Electric.


Corey Mesler has been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. With his wife, he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.