I have the final migraine,
the one they give you
right before the blackout.
At 2 a.m. it spiked
like a fizgig behind my eyes.
I was blinded, even
to dream. Instead I took the
opportunity to fret
about everything, my daughter,
my son, my text, and the
way they want you to pay and
pay in this provisional world.
And this morning the final
migraine speaks to me the
way Jesus spoke to the doubters,
as if I were a child, as if I
had learned nothing,
nothing except pain and how it
quiets you, until you slink
away into the bushes to mate.
I mate there with the devil’s tail.
I wait there for the silvery ending.
Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published four novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), and Following Richard Brautigan (2010), 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. He also claims to have written “Coronet Blue.” With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. Two of his poems were published in STR #5. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.
Steel Toe Review 