Its Own Circle of Peace
It’s raining words from
ancient books, bibles
that once inspired and now
are as extinct as the men
who dreamed them.
It’s raining and I’m inside
where the kettle is
chuckling and beginning a
song I heard once when
I was a younger man and
she was all I wanted.
It is best, when these things
happen, to stay still and
let the words puddle
on the old porch boards,
and let the song begin to
burn behind my breastbone,
and think about how she
was on days like this,
an impossibility wed to the
wettest sex and her eyes
saw it all happening
like a play she had written
herself out of. This is best,
and I pray, for now, it is
its own sweet circle of peace.
Corey Mesler has published prose and/or poetry in Turnrow, Adirondack Review, Paumanok Review, Yankee Pot Roast, Monday Night, Elimae, H_NGM_N, The American Drivel Review, Poet Lore, Forklift OH, Euphony, Rattle, Dicey Brown, Cordite, Cellar Door, others.
His novel-in-dialogue, Talk, was published by Livingston Press in 2002. Raves from Lee Smith, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Stern, Debra Spark, Suzanne Kingsbury, Frederick Barthelme and John Grisham. His new novel, We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, is also from Livingston Press. Kind words this time from George Singleton, Marshall Chapman, Marshall Boswell and others. He also has 6 chapbooks due out in 2006. His poem, “Sweet Annie Divine,” was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. He has been nominated for the Pushcart numerous times.
He has been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.