5 Alt Lit love poems by Corey Mesler

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I kiss the small bird

in the crook of your neck.

I take your corn-silk

hair into my lungs so

that I may breathe you

when you are away.

I long for that first note

your eyes struck when

I said your name in my

protracted sleep. I say,

take me home. I am lost

here in the museum, as

old as the worst, oldest news.

 

 

Mind Mine

for Roky Erickson

 

You went into the bughouse

buggy. You emerged

buggy still. Yet there is, in

your past, a music made

of thunder and a voice

like God’s compass. Is it com-

fort, this history? Is it

enough? It is never enough. We

are ghosts made of songs and

error, ghosts made of songs

and terror, an eye inside an eye.

 

 

Sea Me

 

The sea goes out; once it was in.

Its indecision seems studied.

I wait till the sun

is as ripe as a striptease. I

stand still so the sand

can cover me more effortlessly.

I speak your name,

the one I gave you the

night we danced like flames,

old flames, seemingly eternal.

The night you kissed me as if

I were the only true matador in town.

 

 

Why I Wanted to Write

 

I can split this infinitive

from fifteen paces.

It is this kind of dual,

I mean duel, that

followed us into the

written word. You were

so sure of yourself. I

wanted to write books.

At night you would

massage my nouns. I

would cook a stew from

the petals of bicycle wings.

 

 

The Hive

 

In the copse you took me to the hive,

so full of life I never returned. The

sound inside the hive deafened me

to the children calling my name as if

if I had only gone to the store for milk.

 

 

Corey Mesler

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