"(Can't Get No) Stupefaction" by Leah Mueller
Your exes are all crazy.
The lawyer has a methhead girlfriend
who wanders around his yard at night,
moving random objects to scare his wife.
The vegetarian yoga teacher, grown soft
and lonely, lives in Alabama,
sends you bad poetry every day.
Your latest ex, in Michigan,
stays wasted until four
in the morning, then
sleeps until it’s time to go
to his part-time job in a supermarket.
His girlfriend the sex therapist
thinks you’re to blame for everything.
You must be crazy, as well.
There’s a clinical term for it,
maybe even a cure,
but you’re too lazy to change.
Your daughter thinks she’s ill
and takes two kinds of medications,
but she’s probably
the sanest one in the bunch.
The world is a storm
of inebriated wasps:
political sports and wars
and threats of future wars.
All of them fighting to the death
in an invisible arena,
for no reason, except
they’re out of their goddamned minds
and have nothing better to do.
Why should you be any different?
Let your center come unglued.
Nobody will notice.
The roar of your brain
will mesmerize, until you
can no longer pay attention
to anyone, and they
will fade into a curtain of static.
Welcome to amnesia.
What took you so long?
"The Song That Never Ends" by Leah Mueller
I don’t know
what I want
but I know
I don’t
want you:
and yet,
I stay
right here
beside you
because
I don’t know
what I want.
"Goodbye Email Written While Listening to Alice Coltrane on YouTube" by Leah Mueller
I’m not sure if I
should leave you,
or forget about it
and send you
this music: clear,
filled with such elegance.
Lucid and ethereal.
Not like us
with our broken notes.
We spent ten years
staring at the face
of our lunacy
from a distance
of three thousand miles.
It lasted much longer:
living with parents
who burned everything down,
then boyfriends who smashed
what pieces remained.
My raw face, hands,
reminders of wreckage.
And you:
another fallen robin.
I stood above the box,
fed you with an eyedropper,
your beak always open.
Flying over the continent,
interwoven like stitches.
Reopening the hole
before it could mend.
You dreamed of me:
arms outstretched.
My overflowing plate.
The night’s debris scattered
at the foot of your bed.
Once, you bought me a
forty dollar bottle of wine,
drank it all yourself.
I could never keep up
with your hunger.
My eyes still fool.
Just now I looked
out the window, thought
the leaves were apples.
My seventh decade waits
behind the last row of houses.
One decade spent with you.
Not together: four days
of furious driving.
A week if I took my time.
Machines made easier,
electronic couriers
instead of men on horseback.
Messages delivered in seconds.
The pain of no message.
The empty box. Then
your texts while I slept,
three hours behind.
Sudden phone call.
Ear against plastic,
your cadence a pillow.
Open beak. Those wings,
never fully developed.
I made a list of reasons
not to love. Your voice
erases my words,
but daylight reveals
their smudged outlines.
I hope we can separate
without haunting each other.
Last time, I made my way
back to your room,
found the door
you left unlocked on purpose.
Now: I’ll try harder
to get it correct. We’ll move
in separate directions.
Mirror images of departure,
growing fainter by the second.
The doors will open,
swallow us whole.
You arrived in the summer
and stayed. The winter
is time for leaving.