Corey Mesler

Talk to me

the way a

dancer talks,

all hips

and legs,

eyes elsewhere,

darkness her

real partner.

Talk to me

because I want

to engage you

the way

smoke engages

the candle,

the one

the dancer lit

right before

she left

her man, her

eyes elsewhere,

all hips

and legs,

exhausted of talk.

 

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published six novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), Following Richard Brautigan (2010), and Gardner Remembers (2011), Frank Comma and the Time-Slip (2012), 2 full length poetry collections, Some Identity Problems (2008) and Before the Great Troubling (2011), and 3 books of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009), Notes toward the Story and Other Stories (2011) and I’ll Give You Something to Cry About (2011). 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. His fiction has received praise from John Grisham, Robert Olen Butler, Lee Smith, Frederick Barthelme, Greil Marcus, among others. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis, TN, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.wordpresscom.