Any Way
Any dark cove,
any front porch,
any snuggery,
any post-game
backseat, any
late-night den
floor, any time,
any way, any
weeknight without
homework, any of
us found our-
selves letting out
what had been hidden
so long, beneath jeans
and skirts, and under-
garments, and, friends,
we called it love then,
and even today I
would swear that it was.
Head
The first time a woman took me
in her mouth I knew an
extravagance that was as
powerful as a king’s
hegemony, something outrageous
in the hearts of men, a way
that saints and magi gave thanks on
mornings when the Earth seemed brand new.
Polaroids
When you dressed for the
polaroids, pale filmy blue
bees-wings bought just for the
occasion, I knew a love
born in the heart’s cranny.
You
were as beautiful as all
nature, with your mahogany
tan and the white spaces
vouchsafed for me alone.
I remember the after, too,
our bodies slick with sweat
and humors, the fitting together,
puzzling piece to piece.
I
think of you now as a liminal
pause in my growth from boy to
man. You were too good for
me. I could not resist your
beauty, or your raw, willing
sexuality. It was like a living thing
but captured, ah, in those photos.
Corey Mesler
COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Lunch Ticket, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 50 books of fiction and poetry. His newest book, The World is Neither Stacked for Nor Against You: Selected Short Stories, is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.