Thick with Conviction / Poems by Corey Mesler

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.

The Field’s Poem

I went to the field
because my head was full
of discontent.
I lay with my face toward
the hills
where the sun was scraping
the ridges raw.
Forgive this poor poem.
I allowed the field to
write it
while I contemplated just
what it was that
drew me to those peaks, what
let me down
to bring me out into the open.

Julie And Her Poetry

Julie,
the words are all in order.
Their letters
rattle like chess pieces
in a box.
Yet, I use them to spell
myself,
to offer respite to the hamster
wheel in my soul.
And, I
offer this: to look at you
and think
only about poetry. Only about
poetry
and your opulent mouth
which
so
undoes me
that I leave my Eliot in the rain.

Corey Mesler is the owner of Burke’s Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals including Rattle, Pindeldyboz, Quick Fiction, Cranky, Thema, Mars Hill Review, Poet Lore and others. He has also been a book reviewer for The Memphis Commercial Appeal. A short story of his was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, published by Algonquin Books. Talk, his first novel, appeared in 2002. Nice blurbs from Lee Smith, John Grisham, Robert Olen Butler, Frederick Barthelme, and others. He has a new novel, We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, due out in 2005 from Livingston. His latest four poetry chapbooks are Chin-Chin in Eden (2003) and Dark on Purpose (2004),Short Story and Other Short Stories (2006), and The Heart is Open (2006). He also claims to have written, “I Fought the Law and the Law Won.” Most importantly, he is Toby and Chloe’s dad and Cheryl’s husband.