COREY MESLER

NATURAL CAUSES

My neighbor died last week,
dropping dead in the aisle at
Home Depot. He was a crusty
old bastard and he didn’t care
for me one whit. He was obsessive
about his lawn and house, where
he lived alone. Today the grass
is dirt brown and spotted with
toadstools: nature thumbing its
nose at human hegemony. He used
to sit on his porch, a lonely and
gruff coot; sometimes he would
wave. And sometimes he would berate
me about my crappy lawncare
or my oak which he said was dying.
The tree was not dying. It outlived him. In
its branches blackbirds sing sweet dirges.

TOM PIAZZA BLUES

I woke up with the Tom
Piazza blues,
frogs inside my throat,
knife at the reading.
I was once the king of
Memphis. Now I am
thin as gruel, cruel
if I need to be, but
really only a man who’s
read too many books
and who wants
to talk about them with
anyone, anyone
who knows Tom
Piazza and others like him.

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Lunch Ticket, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 45 books of fiction and poetry. His newest book, The World is Neither Stacked for Nor Against You: Selected Short Stories, is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.