Two poems by Corey Mesler

Running

“In your dream we never saw each other again.”
James Tate

I found you running.
I loved you hard,
like a Greek puzzle.
In bed you were
a tornado, a hot storm
of tears. Even these
many years later
I still wonder at your
easy disappearance.
I didn’t know you were
still, always, running.


Perdurable

Our first date we went to a Cuban
restaurant. It’s not there anymore.
Also: my home had just been broken
into and my television stolen.
She arrived just after the police left.
And, soon, I didn’t care about the
theft, or the heat the food generated.
All I cared about was this woman,
this new woman. Later,
she became my wife. And here the
story really begins. The food
gets better and no one can
steal from us what we hold dearest.

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published two novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), a full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), and a book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009). He also has two novels set to be published in the Spring of 2010, The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (Bronx River Press) and Following Richard Brautigan (Livingston Press). He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He also claims to have written, “In the Year 2525.” With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published Three poems by Corey Mesler. Check it out.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Street art: "Forced collabo" between Elbow-Toe and Pink Clouds.

In many ways memories are like dreams, and Aria Jalali (aka Railcars) has captured the essence of dreaming with his twisted noise-rock version of "Dreams" by The Cranberries.