From the archives — How Language Lets Us Down by Corey Mesler

How Language Lets Us Down

How slaughter is
close to laughter.
How defecation is
close to defection.
How a small stone
placed in a garden
looks, briefly,
like a flower, blooming.
How wary becomes war.
How you and I
spent the last hours
wringing our hands,
language a gone
good, deadened.
How and becomes end.

by Corey Mesler

from Autumn Sky Poetry Number 4, December 2006

Photo by Christine Klocek-Lim