“Rice-field dawn--/would you were here my dead father." --Issa
Another Father's Day approaches and you are still gone. I thought perhaps this year would be different. I stayed up all night thinking possibly you were lost in one of the smaller hours. My pillow grew damned. The light was a fuscous yellow. I could hear the dog snoring delicately. I put my hand out of doors and let the starlight freckle me. I said, Father, I am still restless and young. I am still the boy you wanted to be more manly, the one you loved so fiercely your heart burst. I miss you, I said to the firefly. I miss you, I said to the oak. Let this morning come then, I said. You will not return. Not you who told me it's not easy being alive.
18 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.
