Corey Mesler

The storms blew through like angry dreams.

At times the light was sickly, yellowed as if

from age. And debris showed up in the yard,

its origin a mystery. Somewhere else some

folks died. Somewhere else some people lost

their homes. We huddled together in the den

and watched every dulling minute of the coverage.

The TV was like some ancient fire that kept

away the nighttime beasties. And when I slept

more terror tore through the area. While I

slept the house lost power, the trees more

integrity. While I slept the world changed a bit

one more time. And I awoke this morning

a clammy anxiety inside my chest, a bright new

morning anxiety, as fresh as an ardent tornado.

 

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.