Poem of the Week: ‘No Sense in Waiting’ by Leah Mueller

1st Place
‘No Sense in Waiting’ by Leah Mueller

The rain was falling like artillery
on a chilly March evening
while the four of us huddled
around a tiny wood stove
in a damp farmhouse in the forest.
We rubbed our hands together
in front of the fire,
and the flames sparked abruptly,
making popcorn sounds
as the wet wood ignited.
It was one of those nights
when no one had much to say-
words fell to the floor
like sacks of laundry
and remained there, unattended
until the entire room was filled
with the stench of dullness.
My visiting boyfriend was an attorney
who had followed me from Chicago
to a tiny island in Puget Sound
where I lived with Chris and Debbie,
two women I’d met on the highway
only a month beforehand.
Debbie owned a dog
who’d roamed the same highway
while in heat,
searching for a willing partner
to alleviate her strange discomfort.
Eventually she coupled with a canine
who had bad genes,
and then gave birth to a batch
of deformed puppies, who lay now
in a jumbled pile in the nearby barn,
attended by their anxious mother,
waiting for their fate to be decided.
We humans had known their fate for a while,
but never discussed it openly.
Debbie was a single mother
who had migrated to the Northwest
from a southerly direction,
her sullen toddler son and the dog
tossed into the back of her car
with their few possessions,
stopping only to purchase soda,
disposable diapers and cigarettes.
Now she had a squirming mess
of defective puppies
but no money for a vet bill
for their humane extermination.
Still, Debbie was nothing
if not intrepid-
she suddenly rose to her feet,
strode purposefully across the room,
and heaved herself over to the corner
where her shotgun lay.
She lifted the barrel to her shoulder
and, while everyone stared at her
with stupefied amazement,
she casually stated, “Well,
might as well do it now.
There ain’t no sense in waiting”
and stormed outside into the rain.
A minute later,
the gun fired six times
and then everything was quiet-
at least until Debbie came back inside
sat down beside the wood stove,
snapped the door open,
and threw a new log on the fire.

Leah in her own words:

“I have been writing for as long as I can remember. My contest-winning chapbook, “Queen of Dorksville” was published by Crisis Chronicles Press in October, 2012. I was also one of the 2012 winners in the Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest, sponsored annually by Winning Writers. My work has appeared recently in Bop Dead City, Writing Raw, Quail Bell, Talking Soup, and the Rain, Party, and Disaster Society. I reside in the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest, where I brood and practice yoga.”