EMOTIONAL PRAGMATISM & THE LAST PRESENT / LEAH MUELLER

Emotional Pragmatism

At 63, I expect
little from life,
and even less
from romance.

Just somebody
to vacuum my floor,

fix my broken screen,
wipe the crumbs
from my kitchen counter,

and give me orgasms
three times a week,

without driving me
bonkers from boredom
in the process.

Let’s face facts:
it’s hard to live
with anybody.

They all fart in
the bedroom,
say stupid shit,
and snore.

What can an
elderly woman do
but settle for someone
clean and predictable

but not too
clean and predictable?

At least I won’t
need to do my dishes
ever again.

The Last Present

The final December
before our divorce,

my future ex-husband
gave me a small bottle
of blue paint for my Volvo.

He bought the gift on Christmas Eve,
fifteen minutes before
the stores closed, and didn’t

bother to wrap it.
My car had a couple of light
scratches above its rear bumper,

and an engine that could
never remember how
to function properly.

The paint sat in a drawer
for several years post-divorce,
long after the car threw a rod
and quit running forever.

Now I had a dead vehicle,
a dead marriage, and

a bottle of blue paint
to fix the parts
that no longer worked.

If only everything
could be that simple.

LEAH MUELLER / BISBEE, AZ

Leah Mueller is continuously haunted by a childhood nightmare of falling down several flights of stairs and landing in the basement. At age 63, she still has not made peace with her eventual demise. Her sciatica prevents her from hiking as many miles as she’d like. A pagan since birth, Leah figures that suffering is an organic part of life.