“The city is a cathedral of possessions; its scent is dreams. Even those who have been rejected by it cannot leave." --James Salter
Dream tells the story of itself, amen. Where the water runs clear angelus and the trees shade the part of us that needs shade. Where the woman in the white dress dances along the lines drawn by godly architects. Where the music is Apollo's lute strung with hair. I dream and dream and wake to find the dreams still moving around the room, lighting candles, writing poems on the walls in seraph script. I want to leave the room, eventually, but I know this I cannot do. I am lost to the dream now, the one where I am accepted, the one where finally I am the man I wrote about to you, back in the blood college.
17 The Paris-American
Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published five novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), Following RichardBrautigan (2010), and Gardner Remembers (2011), 2 full length poetry collections, Some Identity Problems (2008) and Before the Great Troubling (2011), and 3 books of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009), Notes toward the Story and Other Stories(2011) and I’ll Give You Something to Cry About (2011). He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.
