Leah Mueller
Seven Stages of Grief
1). I shouldn’t try
to speak to anybody:
I should just be here, where
everyone has arrived by invitation
and is on her best behavior.
2). The can has capsized,
crows pick at the remains.
Last week, the police
came to my street twice.
They made no arrests.
3). I should be here. My life
has been a series of collapses
like early airplane films. No one
is concerned, except me.
This should not
be a surprise.
4). No point in pretending
it doesn’t matter. The rest is
popcorn in my movie.
The wall was always built
and waited patiently
for someone to make it visible.
5). I should be here.
End is abandonment.
The wreckage won’t go quietly.
Throw my wounded shoulder
to the gate, but settle for
the opposite, until finally
everything stops working.
6). We all say
whatever we want. My
main objective is to endure
until bedtime, then repeat.
Don’t forget to leave
the silverware out, in
preparation for mourning.
It saves time.
7). I never expected this knob
to last any longer
than its predecessors,
but the boss told me
it would work fine for
a few more years. I
am not responsible
for its failure, when it
finally falls apart.
Leah Mueller is an independent writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of one chapbook, Queen of Dorksville (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2012), and two books, Allergic to Everything (Writing Knights Press, 2015) and The Underside of the Snake (Red Ferret Press, 2015). Leah was a winner in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, and a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blunderbuss, Memoryhouse, Atticus Review, Open Thought Vortex, Sadie Girl Press, Origins Journal, Silver Birch Press, and other publications.