Cory Mesler

In Flaubert’s Sentimental Education

The hero is victim of obsessive adoration.
Still, he has many women, many
he can only partly love,
if love at all. He is the kind of hero
we cannot warm to, not
now, not when our homes are rattled
with the wheels of a breakneck
modernity. Not now, when our hearts
are open, our hearts are so open,
the world enters, roughly, without surcease,
the ripe, rapacious world.

The Comma

The comma is key, a small
key. It says, wait a second.
This is the same command
I occasionally have to give
the devil, as he takes my breath
away. This is the same sug-
gestion I give to you, my lover,
the woman who waits with
me. The comma is a small key.
It turns right here, in my heart,
where the sentence is carried out.