Corey Mesler - An Afternoon in Late Winter

Corey Mesler

An Afternoon in Late Winter

I was listening to The Peasants, trying to decipher the new code the squirrels had implemented. The house was as still as a painting of a ship. My wife was somewhere. Right between the backbeat and another beat I heard a voice the size of a coin asking me to give up whatever was dearest to me. It seemed a minor thing. I raised my head the way I imagined a potentate might raise his. There was nothing anywhere near me except the list my wife had left me of alternate names. I was to be someone else by the time she got back. I lay back down and began to think about high school, how I’d go back there if I could and right a few wrongs and tell them that the future is a bell jar which you cannot ignore. It was then that I had my best thought and why this whole afternoon ended up as this story. I thought about using all my remaining time on earth to note the differences between people. And once noted I would try to draw lines that connected us all. It was quite an epiphany. Meanwhile, someone had changed the music. It was Alan Avon and the Toy Shop singing, “Night to Remember.” I let my mind go blank. It was there where she found me, in the interstices, in the great white no-thought. I feigned deafness and dumbness and became, finally, totally, deaf and dumb.

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. His novel, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue, was released in 2002. His second novel, We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, came out in January 2006. He has also published numerous chapbooks and one full-length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems. He has been nominated for a Pushcart numerous times. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis, TN.