Sleep Journal

The story that needs to be told
is the one recited in his sleep. 
He wants to carry it into the day
but its words won’t wake with him. 

Now when he speaks, it sounds
like a cracked bell, and the doors
he opens ache on their hinges,
an echo diminishing, the trace 

of a road erased from a map. 
When he asks for directions, 
they always lead to where the rain
drives its nails into the ground.

COREY MESLER

Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Gargoyle, Lunch Ticket, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published more than fifty books of fiction and poetry. With his wife, he owns Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.