Son of a Fireman

Lying on the floor
next to the fireplace
while “Saturday Night Live”
floats in the background
on the living room television,
we laugh at fake news
with Jane and Dan-
because the real news is
you’re here with me
and my parents
are unconscious in bed,
two rooms away.

You have removed my panties
and your hand is inside
my vagina, but
I have to be quiet.
They never get up,
not even to pee,
so I open my mouth
and have a silent orgasm.
Later, I ask my mother
what orgasms feel like,
and how you can tell
if you’re having one.

She says you
can just tell, and
no further discussion
is necessary.

The following weekend
you demand
that I look at your penis,
and I comply,
unzip your jeans hesitantly

and your dick flops out
in a comical manner,
like the hose
your firefighter dad used
to put out your mother’s flames,
or the underside of a snake
slithering upside-down towards
my outstretched hand.

My face remains solemn
but I laugh inside,
and then you ask me
“Is it big enough?”
and I reply,
“Big enough for WHAT?”

Leah Mueller is an indie writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of two chapbooks, “Queen of Dorksville” (Crisis Chronicles Press) and “Political Apnea” (Locofo Chaps) and two books, “Allergic to Everything” (Writing Knights Press) and “The Underside of the Snake” (Red Ferret Press). Her work has been published in Blunderbuss, Memoryhouse, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Origins Journal, Your Impossible Voice, Remixt, and many 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.