"Mesler, Corey - daniel eldritch's guardian angel (SS)(txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mesler Corey)

Arbait for #bookz

Corey Mesler
about himself:

I have published prose and/or poetry in Yellow Silk, Pindeldyboz, Mars Hill Review, Pikeville Review, Center, Small Press Review, Jabberwock Review, Rattle, Orchid, Quick Fiction, Timber Creek Review, Green Egg, Poetry Motel, Raintown Review, Potomac Review, Poetry Super Highway, Big Muddy, Slant, Wilmington Blues, Drought, Rockhurst Review, Wavelength, Lilliput Review, Pearl, Aurorean, Lucid Moon, Heeltap, Sunny Outside, Fish Drum, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Mid-American Poetry Review, Independence Boulevard, Midday Moon, Turnrow, Now Here Nowhere, Dust, Cherotic Revolutionary, Cotyledon, Buckle &, Iodine, Snakeskin (England), Flashpoint, Minas Tirith Evening Star, Drexel Online, FreewheelinТ (England), Pitchfork, Anthology, Poet Lore, Spillway, The Pegasus Review, Reverb, Kimera, Thema, Kumquat Meringue, LonzieТs Fried Chicken, Both Sides Now, Electric Acorn (Dublin), Razor Wire, Gin Bender, Blue Unicorn, Black Dirt, The Spirit that Moves Us, Wind, Red Rock Review, Art Times, Concrete Wolf, Memphis Magazine, Rhino, Visions International, others. I have a chapbook of poems, Piecework, from the Wing and a Wheel Press. I have work in the anthologies Full Court: A Literary Anthology of Basketball (Breakaway Books), Pocket Parenting Poetry Guide (Pudding Press), Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure (New World Press) and Smashing Icons (Curious Rooms). I recently won the Moonfire Poetry Chapbook Competition and my chapbook will be published by Still Waters Press in 2003.
One of my short stories was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The YearТs Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel.
My novel-in-dialogue, Talk, was published by Livingston Press in 2002. Raves from Lee Smith, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Stern, Debra Spark, Suzanne Kingsbury, Frederick Barthelme and John Grisham.
I've been a book reviewer (for The Commercial Appeal, BookPage, The Memphis Flyer, Brightleaf), fiction editor (for Ion Books/raccoon), university press sales rep, grant committee judge (for The Oregon Arts Council), father and son. With my wife I own BurkeТs Book Store, one of the countryТs oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores.



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daniel eldritchТs guardian angel

_УThe angels play their horns all day/The whole earth in progression seems to pass by./But does anyone hear the music they play?/Does anyone even try?_Ф
Bob Dylan

_УFor everyone his Gabriel and the Mocker,/The stillness, and the fountain, and the Master._Ф
Mervyn Peake

Daniel EldritchТs mother died in Memphis, Tennessee, on December 5, 20--. That may have been the start of it. Certainly some odd behavior can be attached to Daniel prior to this, his airiness, his lack of concern about how his hair curled down over his eyebrows in a manner suggesting some kind of Tolkien creature, his habit of saying СSorryТ before almost any pronouncement.
Sure, his coworkers at Mutual Bank and Trust found him an odd bird, a good worker, yes, but eccentric and even a bit standoffish. Always seemed to have his nose in his work yet his work proceeded slowly as if by accretion. As if his completed reports were the result of decades of dripping water or millennia of shifting rock.
But no one could have predicted DanielТs talk of a guardian angel. Nay, DanielТs obsession with a guardian angel.
One day he just began speaking of it as if overnight he had been promised a heavenly visitor though he offered no such Уproof.Ф Suddenly, there it was, in the bright light of day: DanielТs self-assurance that one of GodТs messengers would be his soon; one of the Empyrean Seraphs was coming solely for Daniel Eldritch, solely to help him over some of the scabrous spots of life.
УSorry,Ф he said to Chip Hohenberg. УBut isnТt it comforting to know, to be waiting, to be guaranteed that help is on its way? God still is with us. Yep, thatТs comforting.Ф
So his coworkers, Lettie Crunk chief among them, began speaking of the death of DanielТs mother as the catalyst, as in:
УHe needs help since his mum died.Ф
УHeТs having a rough time of it since Mrs. Eldritch passed.Ф
УDanielТs looking for reason, looking for comfort, looking for godly affirmation, because he has lost his nearest and dearest.Ф
УWe all need to wrestle with the Big D question, yessir.Ф
So Daniel was given a wide berth, a large playing field for his eccentricities to prosper. Smiles greeted his strangest pronouncement. Head-nods answered his most abnormal queries.
And not long afterwards, on his way to work, on the mile or so walk from his three-room apartment to the bank, Daniel was granted his holy interception. Or so he believed. Walking east, the rising sun a burning hole in his vision, smog and allergens already blurring his tiny eyes, Daniel stopped to remove a piece of grit from his right tear duct, a simple piece of grit. Sent most likely by a MATA bus or FTD van rather than YHTD, Daniel at any rate traced all that happened afterwards to this short pause workward, this serendipity on the sidewalk of the great thronging city.
As Daniel wiped at his eye, his bodyТs natural fluids attempting to aid him in the removal of his irritant, the sun glinted off every available slick surface, and in that bright burning moment of revelation, Daniel saw before him a shadowy presence with wings spread wide, wings dark and fulsome. Daniel saw the figure from the rear but the great wingspan was unmistakable and the vision as indisputable and signifying as the tears on a statue of the Holy Mother.
Actually, and here we must present truth as we know it for the sake of our storyТs verisimilitude and integrity. We must be neutral. And, to do so, we must turn 180 degrees; as the movie people say we must change our POV.
Seen from the east, that is looking westward toward Daniel Eldritch, the figure of DanielТs vision was actually a homeless man named Richard УSonnyФ Lemontina and the wings Daniel witnessed unfolding was actually the opening of SonnyТs battered coat as he exposed his naked lower half to a tourist named Sadie Whitehead from Panama City, Florida, who was not confounded by her flasher (УNothing would surprise me in this city,Ф Sadie said later.), but who was interested in the flaccid length of SonnyТs pizzle. SadieТs reaction was almost clinical. She stared for an unsavory few moments, taking in the veined and muscular length of this membrum virile, which, although dirty, was a healthy specimen indeed, even in its deflated state.
Sonny, disappointed by the lack of shock on the face of his Уvictim,Ф closed his coat, but too late. Daniel already had him by the arm, a grip like his vice. DanielТs eyes seem to spin in his face, tiny points of whirling cosmos, pentalphas dancing.
УHey, bub,Ф Sonny said. УLeggo the material.Ф
His voice was whiskered. Daniel held on for dear life, because he believed he was doing exactly that.
Sonny, to his credit, did not make with the testosterone and smack his attacker with a haymaker. He was mesmerized by DanielТs exorbitant gaze.
УSir,Ф Sonny said after a moment. УLoosen thy grip and talk to me, man to, you know, man.Ф
SonnyТs breath was fetid. Daniel believed it was otherworldly; nevertheless he loosened his grip on the poor manТs sleeve.
УSorry,Ф Daniel muttered. УSo so sorry.Ф
УSawright,Ф Sonny said, taking a cautionary step away and tugging at his sartorial layers as if they were indeed heavenly raiment.
УI am Daniel,Ф Daniel said. УEldritch.Ф
УGood, good,Ф Sonny said, extending a bemired hand.
Daniel took the proffered hand in both of his, held it like a loverТs. Sonny was still looking for clues in DanielТs pointy, spatial eyes.
УI am why you were sent,Ф Daniel said.
УSent.Ф