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, Outlook Springs, University of Chicago Memoryhouse, Atticus Review, Open Thought Vortex, Sadie Girl Press, Origins Journal, Quail Bell, Silver Birch Press, and many other publications.
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► Leah's microchap & selected poem(s) are available below.
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Origami Microchap
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Selected Poem(s)
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 Cover: Glacier
by Lauri Burke
Every Origami Microchap
may be printed, for free, from this website. •
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Glacier I know we've arrived home
by the pine scent, and you almost smile as we climb from the car, say “it smells so good here.” I agree, notice how thin your face looks now, and how your jeans used to be much fuller. We've had a severe year, without pause in the trenches, and I can feel the strain in your teeth and shoulders: those shoulders your parents taught to hide from confrontation. You need three days to relax, after countless doses of forest medicine, administered one dropper at a time. At the waterfall, I have trouble parking the car and it reminds you of your other problems, all the angles you can never reach. Still, you steer in reverse, into a parking spot, and we walk uphill until the road swallows us whole. We return to our sanctuary. The previous day, we climbed much higher, to Artist Point, followed the switchbacks and watched two young boys run downhill through boulders as if falling was impossible. We know stumbling is inevitable, and we walk gently through rubble, gaze at blue-plated lakes, shiver as fall arrives. The glacier recedes, but the chill moves in harder than ever. Later, we drink wine, watch a sixteen year-old movie: two bodies curled together on a plaid couch beside the Nooksack. The years rage by like angry water, and we fail to pay attention. We must be taught to remember. • Leah Mueller © 2017
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