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COREY MESLER

My Dead Father

    
    “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

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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 Richard Brautigan (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.

   
   Next week's poet:

 C. Dale Young
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