FOUR POEMS BY COREY MESLER

BEAST
My senses awaken if not my sense.
Her face is beatific
if there are still believers.
She's young, as new as sinless Eden.
And she carries that
dangerousness like a sweet
pocket of powder.
I am moth, sleeper, reprobate.
My cage door swings open on its own.
I close it, as if I loved
my captors.
As if living here was what I had in mind
all the time.

A.M.
At the edge of thought
a near-thought.
This morning the sun is
late: winter.

AND-
The way I carry myself.
The ship on the horizon.
The pain in my thigh.
The aroma she left on the coverlet.
The matchbox car I had when I was ten.
The cuts in her cheeks.
The first poem I wrote.
The paper I kept in a bottom drawer.
The curvilinear cooling towers.
The late night talks.
The war in Vietnam.
The sadness in my mother's soul.
The calm suffering of my father.
The asthma I had undiagnosed.
The way I could hit a tennis ball.
The way I could shoot a gun.
The love, the way I could love.
The pain in my chest.
The sway of her lower back.
The news about the President.
The first adult book I read.
The first woman I saw naked.
The trips we took to Ontario.
The way I used to think.
The friends who have abandoned me.
The way I thought about friendship.
The aroma she left in my head.
The pain between my legs.
The news of my brother's cancer.
The mistake that led to pregnancy.
The shining son that came.
The first poem I wrote.
The way I feel today.
The pain in my thigh.
The love that does not die.
The love that is like pain.
The wife I will always have.
The daughter we made.
The pain in my head.
The pain that is fear.
The pain that is my absence.
The pain that is always always always.
The way you look at me when I hurt.

O FOR A MUSE OF FIRE
I dip my pin in blood,
reply to your indifference
with irony, make a
small black mark
and expect it to face things
for me. Poor
sanguinary scrivener, who would
prefer not, but who
has to. Out of love.

Corey Mesler

You may e-mail Corey at chmesler@earthlink.net