Still Life with a Spiral Lollipop
too heavy a weight stick grasped in your hand teeth bared for the camera just another hour then you can have some ice cream because you’re such a good girl you know how to sit still but you only want flight lifting above the face sea the teeth are in rows the picket fence teeth the eyes like potatoes dull and brown eyes that can’t see the sun don’t allow yourself to peer into the pinhole there is nothing inside the clock leaps and moans you hold the lollipop the swirl like the inside of your head and that is the only way your parents can love you your grandmother can say well you’re such a good girl look how nicely you sit still look how neat your clothing is you’re a little lady and ladies need to know it’s a man’s world so they must stay tidy not ask too many questions always have dinner ready and when you hear your husband’s footfall the opening of the mechanical garage door then for god’s sake fix him a cocktail and make one for yourself as well the lollipop gets heavy when you hold it in the air for too long but you can’t put it down because you’re a good girl and good girls do what the grownups tell them the same grownups who cry in their beds at night the same grownups who won’t come when you cry in your bed at night when you think your bedroom is on fire and maybe it really is on fire maybe it has always been on fire maybe the whole world is on fire and you are about to burst into flames you will burst into flames if you have to sit here for another minute but you don’t burst into flames you just smile as the photographer says what a good girl how nicely you smile how well you sit still stay a little longer and we’ll take some more photos for the paper you want to be in the paper don’t you every little girl wants her picture in the paper and you are so pretty you will be the loveliest girl in the Chicago Sun-Times and everyone will say who is that girl in the fifty-dollar coat with the fifty-dollar smile and the lollipop that turns like a merry-go-round and you will forget that your parents don’t really love you your daddy moved away and your stepdad doesn’t come when you scream or he makes you scream again and again don’t scream now or no one will like you and you won’t have your photo in the fashion pages every girl wants to be in the fashion pages and you don’t want to be a bad girl do you or worse yet an ugly one okay just one more photo smile larger show some teeth but not too many teeth you don’t want to look angry do you the best thing about being a girl is that you can smile and get anything you want
Leah Mueller
Leah Mueller's work is published in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. One of her short stories appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her fourteenth book, "Stealing Buddha" was published by Anxiety Press in 2024. Website: www.leahmueller.org.
Why this Knocked Martheaus Out:
I'm a sucker for this formal trick: using the prose block to simulate the intensity, the spiraling psyche, and the feeling of being "trapped." Poets are used to the air and space, but I really appreciate how the compact and heavy feeling of the form affects the breath of the piece. It's an onslaught, with no punctuation or indentation to save us, but the piece wants us to wade through the difficulty, it wants us to feel the tension of holding all these images together as we move forward.
I just love the specificity and the places where the voice shines in this cacophony. The "for god’s sake fix him a cocktail and make one for yourself" and specificity with the Chicago Sun-Times reveal, and of course that picket fence teeth line all contribute to this very multi-faceted voice.
Interview:
It seems like a lot of work to compose a rant--something that seems spontaneous and yet so particular with its craft. Can you talk through how you found the voice for this piece?
I wrote the piece in a surrealist poetry class that I took here in Tulsa last fall. A lot of good work came from that class. It was a new type of writing for me--my style is normally much more concrete and traditional. I felt as though I was in a mild trance.
Still Life poems are great! I'm thinking of that great Diane Seuss book about a still life. Was this an actual image or moment you were reflecting on?
Our excellent instructor, Claire Campos, suggested "still life" as a prompt.
There's this turn to a more intimate and tender moment toward the end with the family relations. The "good girl" reference seems to be increasing the tension until we get that explosion of daddy moving away. Can you talk through that shift?
The girl (who is me, of course) is reflecting upon the futility of being well-behaved--people will leave anyway, no matter how "good" you are.