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There were too many stories.
We had to shove them aside
just so we could move around.
The ones my wife wanted to
keep I thought hideous. She
told me mine were puerile,
products of too much mothering.
I woke up in the middle of
the night, a silver light made
our house seem a moonscape,
dead and inert. I walked around,
trying to dispel the cloud
forming in my head, thwarting
sleep. I looked out the window
at my neighbor who was
feeding raccoons. I turned away
in a fury, kicking my wife's
stories from corner to corner,
such was my desire to escape.
Corey Mesler is the owner of Burke's Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country's oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals including Yellow Silk, Pindeldyboz, Green Egg, Black Dirt, Thema, Mars Hill Review, Poet Lore and others. He has worked in the book business all his adult life, if he has had an adult life. He is also a book reviewer for The Memphis Commercial Appeal, The Memphis Flyer, Brightleaf and BookPage. Talk is his first novel.