Practicing Dying

In the neighborhood it was
who could die best.
We all left our TVs long
enough to practice
what we’d seen. Bobby
fell in slow motion,
his grimace our best
showing. I wanted to be-
long so badly I made
my dying existential. It
was lost on the gang. 
Now I want to practice
that slow-motion swoon,
falling away from the earth
like a piece of the eternal puzzle.

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.