Four Poems
by Leah Mueller
Nothing, Arizona
Nothing lies in the middle of nowhere,
on Highway 93, 23 miles from Wikieup,
the rattlesnake capital of America.
It started as a joke in 1977.
Richard “Buddy” Kenworthy,
a man who embraced oblivion,
made Nothing his home for 28 years,
until one day he fled
in the middle of the night:
desperate, searching for anything,
but he didn’t know what.
Nothing still exists today,
though barely--a restroom
inside a crumbling gas station,
and four motorist call boxes.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Another man tried to make
something out of Nothing,
selling pizzas to curious motorists
who wanted to know what
Nothing looked like,
but no one really cared,
and the pizza grew stale.
The town rolled over a few times,
then expired like a dog,
in the middle of a deserted street.
Nothing is nothing again,
and it couldn’t be happier.
New Orleans, 1978
A single, fly-specked lightbulb
signaled my approach to home,
as I returned from a fancy outing
in the French Quarter.
My date dropped me off,
gave me twenty bucks,
and didn’t even attempt a pass.
“You shouldn’t have to live like this,”
he said before he drove away.
Miles from my doorstep,
the bayou pulsated like a lost heart.
Wealthy people devoured Cajun food,
washed it down with fifty-dollar bourbon,
and gazed at the brackish Mississippi,
as it meandered its way towards the Gulf.
Early that night, too warm for a jacket,
I shivered in the darkness of Pat O’Brien’s,
surrounded by packs of callow preppies
and buckets of cheap beer.
Clutching my overpriced Hurricane,
I tried my hardest to belong.
The carport overflowed
with sports cars and Cadillacs,
driven by first-year Tulane students.
Old Southern money oozed from each pore,
stank up the room like cologne.
If I closed my eyes and wished hard enough,
perhaps I could take flight, soar through
the magnolia trees like a peacock,
but home offered no succor—
just a windowless room and single mattress,
with the promise of one more night’s rest.
The Sign Says “Baker Street” at the London Tube Stop,
but no one mentions saxophones except me.
Heavy doors shut: my usual cue
to mind the gap between platform and train.
Each station mentions pop culture,
only recognizable to tourists. Brits read magazines
purchased from tiny stands inside the rail station,
eat bitter sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.
In dreams, everything in London is free,
each room a backwards labyrinth.
When I open doors, strangers recognize
my face, and those of my relations.
My son stares through glass, counts the stops
before arrival. He reads electronic timetables
with a look of studied anxiety. Twenty minutes
should give us time to walk to the bus.
The passengers wear raincoats.
Our driver, encased within a plastic box,
refuses to emerge for any reason.
Trains call at the station, but never stop.
Stopping is merely an afterthought.
In dreams, tunnels lead to silverware
inside the Dickens house. A wooden spoon
presses against my cupped palm. The guard
reminds me to return it when I’m done.
Heathrow airport is measured in kilometers,
its hangars filled with triumphant planes.
People levitate when they leave a city,
land on the opposite side of the world.
Each body finds its home. Mine is unconsciousness.
Sleeping with my head against a window.
The dense, numbing air. London shrinks to an insect,
evaporates like water. When I step into fluorescent light,
its blurred outlines become clear again.
Motel Heart
Someone always wants to live inside me,
though I don’t understand why. A folded
part of them lies tucked within my body
like a glove compartment map.
Unfold the sections, smooth the creases,
search for the lines where cities intersect:
somewhere between the rest area and the next exit,
beyond the sign that reads “food, gas, lodging.”
I never learned how to stay empty. Never
could bear the sight of cars passing by
without stopping. My light shines for others,
extinguished only when there is no longer room
for one more exhausted traveler,
searching for a snug place to sleep.
*Originally published at The Whisky Blot
BIO: Leah Mueller's work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah's flash piece, "Land of Eternal Thirst" appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her two newest books are The Failure of Photography (Garden Party Press, 2023) and Widow's Fire (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).
Website: http://www.leahmueller.org.