All in by Leah Mueller

Antisocial Media

SWWIM Every Day
by Leah Mueller

by Leah Mueller

You’re jealous of everyone,

                even when they’re doing things

                                                you don’t want to do,

                   because they’re not sitting

                                at home, feeling jealous of you.

In photos, everyone poses

                in glittery frames, grinning

                                              into the kaleidoscope.

At home, the dishes pile up

                  in the sink, and creditors

            won’t stop calling.

Don’t you want to jump

               into a car and keep driving,

                                over mountains and rivers

 

all the way across

           the Atlantic, to a place where

                               nobody knows your name?

      Can anyone blame you

                         for trying to disappear?

You finally hear

                 what your voice sounds like,

                       

       strong and quiet as trees.

Then one day, you

           have a sudden urge

                    to switch on the computer,

and the whole goddamn thing

              starts all over again.

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Leah Mueller is the author of two chapbooks and four books. Her most recent book, a memoir entitled Bastard of a Poet, was published in 2018 by Alien Buddha Press. Her work appears in Blunderbuss, The Spectacle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and many other magazines and anthologies. She was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival, and a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest.