Prick of the Spindle: Poetry: Mesler: A Brief Respite

The Brief Respite
By Corey Mesler

It was a brief respite.
God took His thumb off
our napes. Some of
us began to speak of going
outside again. Those
who had huddled over pots
of ice, those who were
entomorphagous or ate
matzo for weeks. It was a
brief respite. The rain held
off, then came in cataracts.
We could not see what was
in front of us and we had
forgotten everything else.
We only wanted what any
people want, a time to
gather together to see what
we all thought, a place to
feel like we were viable.
God stepped back to survey
us in toto. We looked like
a new experiment, a culture
divided, dividing, finally
able to give ourselves a name,
a prayer we would never forget,
a name that sounded like vulgus.

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), a full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), and a book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009). 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, “Dang Me.” With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.