COREY MESLER

I have published prose and/or poetry in Muse Apprentice Guild, Rattle, Canopic Jar, Contrary, Pindeldyboz, Mars Hill Review, Pikeville Review, Arkansas Review, Center, Small Press Review, Jabberwock Review, Orchid, Quick Fiction, Timber Creek Review, Green Egg, Poetry Motel, Raintown Review, Potomac Review, Poetry Super Highway, Big Muddy, Slant, Wilmington Blues, Drought, Rockhurst Review, Wavelength, Lilliput Review, Pearl, Aurorean, Lucid Moon, Heeltap, Sunny Outside, Fish Drum, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Mid-American Poetry Review, Independence Boulevard, Midday Moon, Turnrow, Now Here Nowhere, Dust, Cherotic Revolutionary, Cotyledon, Buckle &, Iodine, Snakeskin (England), Flashpoint, Freewheelin' (England), Pitchfork, Anthology, Poet Lore, Spillway, The Pegasus Review, Reverb, Kimera, Thema, Kumquat Meringue, Lonzie's Fried Chicken, Both! Sides Now, Electric Acorn (Dublin), Razor Wire, Gin Bender, Blue Unicorn, Black Dirt, The Spirit that Moves Us, Wind, Red Rock Review, Art Times, Concrete Wolf, Memphis Magazine, Rhino, Visions International, others. I have a chapbook of poems, Piecework, from the Wing and a Wheel Press. I have work in the anthologies Full Court: A Literary Anthology of Basketball (Breakaway Books), Pocket Parenting Poetry Guide (Pudding Press), Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure (New World Press) and Smashing Icons (Curious Rooms).

I recently won the Moonfire Poetry Chapbook Competition and my chapbook, Chin-Chin in Eden, has just been published by Still Waters Press.

One of my short stories was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel.

My 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.

I've been a book reviewer (for The Commercial Appeal, BookPage, The Memphis Flyer), fiction editor (for Ion Books/raccoon), university press sales rep, grant committee judge (for The Oregon Arts Council), father and son. With my wife I own Burke's Book Store, one of the country's oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores.

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GOD ENTERTAINS

-Belief is mysterious; faith is mysterious. But God is not a mystery. We are.

Toni Morrison

God threw a party

in a little anteroom in Heaven

and my wife and I went

reluctantly. The usual

crowd was there, the seraphim

and cherubim, the secondary

and tertiary angels.

Peter was a no-show again,

but we didn't care.

We came for the food and

a little chin-chin with

God. We left disappointed,

of course. He was too

busy worrying over the party's

details to talk in depth.

We did manage to ask him

about mosquitoes and

poison ivy, but his pre-occupied

answer was that he would

look into it. Later, that night,

when my wife and I were

undressing for bed, she turned

to me with a funny expression.

Do you think these parties

are recompense for something?

For the life of me, I told her,

I simply do not know.

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MY PARENTS' HOUSE, CIRCA 1971

They must have wondered and not asked.

What is this yellow submarine,

this dormouse,

this voodoo chile?

And I sat in their paneled den with

them nights, pixilated with

colored smoke,

watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

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YOUNG LOVE

-the vintage man no longer hurts himself or anyone

Hafiz

When I was younger

I loved like a young man loves,

passionately, recklessly,

with death on the line.

I write this now for the women

who have aged as I have

and who are not afraid of looking

backward. Listen: I was

a starving beast; I was a mole

looking for light. Let

a rain of peace descend on us all,

please, here in the space

between Heaven and more life.

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FIFTH GRADE BEST FRIEND
-for Pat Morgan

He was rough, dark & fascinating.

One night we slept in the back

of his parents' station wagon.

Together, we lived for bb guns

& anything wild the woods

would offer. I was small & timid;

he was tough as a dog, afraid

of nothing, inexplicably attached to me.

He was the first of us to smoke.

Later, I heard, he ended up in

prison. This seems probable.

There was a time, though, when I

would have done anything for him.

He was my constant. Today,

thirty years later, I wonder where he

is, especially at night, when the

darkness is frightening still,

when he might be out there, loose

as a nickel, just this side of trouble.

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LITTLE SHORT POEMS

Little short poems

that distract like gnats:

how I love them when

they work. And how tire-

some they are when they

do not.