8/16/2017 0 Comments Poetry by Leah MuellerTHE TELL-TALE SCREEN Technology streamlines argument: constant drumbeat, strut halo, jockey ahead of the others. The last word important, or failing that, silence. Ghost upon ghost. Soon nothing corporeal. No springs. No arm holes. Just machine. No one tries to stop. Instead, we fill in forms, check and re-check boxes, turn everything over, searching for flaws. We stay inside, transfixed by megabytes. At the park, I check the cavity of my purse five times, remember I left my screen at home. The urge to argue and document is strong, beats in the wall like a dead heart. I remember a time when none of it mattered. Now my ears overflow with the chatter of electronic squirrels. The cedar tree branches, their elephant bark. I place hands against trunk, stare at heavy overhead arms. Muscular branches tolerate no interference, yet give willingly, even to me. Each day I grow more frightened. In my dream, the tree uproots, topples forward. Its tentacle roots wave uselessly at indifferent birds. At home, the screen still pulsates like it is the most alive thing in the room. The switch never off, the buzz of mosquitoes. I lock front and back doors tight: cover them with bricks, as wind rustles against the sill, trapped in useless motion. CIRQUE DU SOLEIL You were a failed experiment on my living room carpet two nights after the earthquake. We shot pool at an Irish bar around the corner from my house and you told me a story: you split your head open on stage while taking a bow at the end of your show, and that was the end of your clown career. Or perhaps I was the end of your clown career, later with my legs in the air. It was the same carpet I'd rolled on when the quake waves hit, and there I was again, in the same position, doing my best to dodge falling objects. Your aerial act was revenge for a crime committed in another state, and you made certain I knew it. At the airport, you told me to stop my “Buddhist life-is-suffering bullshit” and bought me a bagel when I cried. Years later, your screenplay bombed at the box office, and I smiled knowingly at the two-star rating. Some folks succeed, while some split their heads open as they bow, and others never make it onstage in the first place. You have to keep experimenting until you discover a formula that finally works. Meanwhile, you'd better hang on tight to your beaker, and be certain to line the floor with newspaper in case of spills. Bio: Leah Mueller is an indie writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of two chapbooks, “Queen of Dorksville” (Crisis Chronicles Press) and “Political Apnea” (Locofo Chaps) and two books, “Allergic to Everything” (Writing Knights Press) and “The Underside of the Snake” (Red Ferret Press). Her work has been published in Blunderbuss, Memoryhouse, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Origins Journal, Silver Birch Press, Cultured Vultures, Remixt, and many anthologies. She was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival, and a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest.
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