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Serial Monogamy
“Don’t be so pervious,” she slapped me. I encountered, “But I have no epidermis.” And, though she took me to her sheets and unread me like a turgid book, I sensed she had some- thing else in mind. A rearrangement of my organs, and then a better gomer. “Look around, Buckaroo,” she whispered on the threshold. “The world is full of cannibals. Learn to love being prey.” My next Thisbe, I thought, won’t be so, I don’t know, lupine. So, I don't know, attractive. |
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Afreet
How I got ugly is the name of my thesis. I once had a woman, her cheeks were fresh as hay, her lower back a bridge out of chaos. It was long ago and now I am alone at my bowl. I hate my house for shifting its beams. I hate all of you, for letting me know that I’ve grown ugly. No, I do not hate. I do not have the energy. I roil in disbelief, in my own improbability |
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Smudge
It’s only a word that leads you here, the same word which lead me. And tomorrow it will be erased because it’s all temporal. At the end of nothing there is nothing. I wake up just in time to hear this and misunderstand. |
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Corey Mesler owns Burke’s Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country’s oldest (1875) independent bookstores. His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals including Pindeldyboz, Orchid, Black Dirt, Thema, Mars Hill Review, and Poet Lore. He has reviewed books for The Memphis Commercial Appeal. Judges selected a short story of his for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel, published by Algonquin Books. His first novel, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue, appeared in 2002.. A poetry chapbook, Chin-Chin in Eden, is just out from Still Waters Press. |
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Copyright 2004, Corey Mesler.This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author. |
