Corey Mesler’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published two novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006). His first full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), is out from Foothills Publishing, and his book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations, appeared in March 2009. He also has two novels to be published in the next year. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize numerous times and one of his poems was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He has two children, Toby, age 20, and Chloe, age 13. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (est. 1875) and best independent bookstores. He also claims to have written “In the Year 2525.” He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.

Chiasmatype

     by Corey Mesler

           noun—genetics:

           the process of chiasma formation, which is the basis for crossing over.

I want the bridge, the

crossing over. I want

to live where you live.

I want to wake up in a

place where the color

of the sun is the color

I see inside the simplest

poem. I want to speak

into your hair the words

that deliver me from the

wreckage of my attempt

to travel. And when the

day is done I want to

cross over again, to a

country where the leaders

talk like parrots, like

streams running clear,

like the mouths of caves.

I want to cross over with

you, my lily white. And I want

the crossing to be our final act.

© 2009 Corey Mesler