Two poems by COREY ZELLER
I the rider
Without shaking, her hips, newly without, ash where a fire never was, burned. I:
the last part of the earth that meets the sky, dizzied. I: patron saint of public
restroom walls and exploding white masks, pegs and nude paintings, the swells of
a guitar pick streaming gang signs and broken Coke bottles. I: the circulatory
system of subways slept in, our clumsy stealing. I: a set-list, a scrap of notebook
paper blown into the world, into and into, the way I tumbled into her clean
mouth and couldn’t find my way back out, back to where I held her, still,
unraveling in my arms like a therapy session, a depression like teething, cop
voices. She swallows hard and I am almost there. It is almost like kissing.
67 The Paris-American
Without shaking, her hips, newly without, ash where a fire never was, burned. I:
the last part of the earth that meets the sky, dizzied. I: patron saint of public
restroom walls and exploding white masks, pegs and nude paintings, the swells of
a guitar pick streaming gang signs and broken Coke bottles. I: the circulatory
system of subways slept in, our clumsy stealing. I: a set-list, a scrap of notebook
paper blown into the world, into and into, the way I tumbled into her clean
mouth and couldn’t find my way back out, back to where I held her, still,
unraveling in my arms like a therapy session, a depression like teething, cop
voices. She swallows hard and I am almost there. It is almost like kissing.
67 The Paris-American
He is in his second mind, my mind
A fallout shelter, one dingy basement below the other, a place to stave off, be
sorry. I shuffle through my memory which is monotone, yellow pages. Every
business listed is a company specializing in cementing windows, unfixing doors,
collecting zeroes. You call and the number is busy. You call and hear yourself
breathing on the other end. Whatever I did to deserve this is like the clouds:
crisp with misinformation, leashing. I sit fixing something which turns out to be
a human bone. It bends now, on its own. I adjust my head with my hands, up
where a light should be. It is not a light but a keyhole a man is watching me
through. I look at the door, waiting for the knob to turn. I look into the keyhole:
another empty room.
68 The Paris-American
A fallout shelter, one dingy basement below the other, a place to stave off, be
sorry. I shuffle through my memory which is monotone, yellow pages. Every
business listed is a company specializing in cementing windows, unfixing doors,
collecting zeroes. You call and the number is busy. You call and hear yourself
breathing on the other end. Whatever I did to deserve this is like the clouds:
crisp with misinformation, leashing. I sit fixing something which turns out to be
a human bone. It bends now, on its own. I adjust my head with my hands, up
where a light should be. It is not a light but a keyhole a man is watching me
through. I look at the door, waiting for the knob to turn. I look into the keyhole:
another empty room.
68 The Paris-American
Corey Zeller is the author of Man vs. Sky (YesYes Books, 2013). His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, The Colorado Review, Diagram, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, West Branch, The Literary Review, New York Tyrant, Chorus (MTV Books), among others. He currently serves as an associate editor at Mud Luscious Press and a social media wrangler for H_NGM_N BOOKS.