Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica
Swingset

Ars Poetica

Life began with grapefruit pieces and a long spoon.  Looking out the window of a restaurant at cars driving by in the still-dark morning.

Walking down the corridor of my high school, someone asking me something.

Ars Poetica

My favorite song before, during, and after was "Endless Summer Nights" by Richard Marx,

I don't remember taking the elevator, could see twinkly lights and two pools, couldn't see how it was romantic, wish I could have told someone,

and was wearing flowered denim shorts and Keds with the laces untied.

Swingset

After dinner with his parents at the Harborside, and walking around looking at sailboats, you decide to have a fire. You can see what it will take to connect.

You stop to get some wood from his grandmother's house and his mother shows you around.  Did you get in the back door when no one was looking?

After his mother goes to bed you learn that the wood you are burning had once been her swing set.  And right then you know that you can't go back.

Jamie Buehner grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on the water.  Her first chapbook, Dessert Poems, a collaborative effort with Sleet editor-in-chief Susan Solomon, is scheduled for release by Binge Press circa January 2012.