Fragments 3
stuffed black bear stands just inside the doorway of one of the shops in Bar Harbor.
Can’t hear any echoes. There are no canyons around here.
inherited his beautiful black and white Border Collie.
not the excitement of the ride, but a nest full of hidden rattlesnakes.
hot summer days are all gone now in this chilly December sunshine.
I worked closely with a young black man
What’s the secret code? Can’t remember it.
the vast murderous parking lot that is Atlanta.
As for Emily Dickinson, I don’t care for all of those dashes.
Death pushed itself up hard against a brick wall.
with Dick in tow, I bought a watercolor painting
and I would notice all of the caught fish that were dying in the large catch box, their
mouths sucking desperately, gasping in the air that was slowly killing them.
hidden behind the heavy blue curtain.
I hear that Sammy has it in for you because you ate almost all of the elephant cookies.
You could try it on a work detail.
we gradually move down the mountain and the weather warms.
the (female) minister, glasses glinting in the sun and with a very grim expression,
plummets into the bloody parts of the smashed up pigs.
Dora and Jenny’s mittens fit too tightly on their cold tiny hands.
Suburbia
The young woman’s car ran out of gas again.
Now what was she supposed to do? Her husband
would simply not understand the situation and would
be furiously angry with her. She could visualize the
argument already.
The mother’s face took on a worried expression because
it was already after two in the morning and where was her
teen aged daughter and why hadn’t she called home by now?
It turned out to be a bright sunny April morning. Tom yanked
at the cord on his lawnmower and it started after three pulls. He
really didn’t mind mowing his lawn. As he mowed he would think
of things that were recently happening in his life and about different
minor problems too and how he might solve them. After finishing
his lawn he felt a satisfying sense of accomplishment as he always
did. Three cars passed him in rapid succession. The last driver was
playing her radio much too loudly and Tom glared at her as she passed
by.
Bill came into the house and passed his parents without saying hello
and walked straight toward his room. He unlocked the door and went
inside and locked the door again. His pistol and semi-automatic rifle
were lying right where he had laid them. He fingered their cold steel
and then sat down before his computer and turned it on and watched the
screen light up.
Joseph Buehler has published over one hundred and twenty poems in over 40 literary magazines including Otoliths (Australia), Roi Faineant (Ireland), Sentinel Literary Quarterly and The Poet Magazine (the UK)), soon in Expanded Field (Netherlands) and in the USA in ArLiJo, North Dakota Quarterly, The Tower Journal and others. He and his wife Patricia moved to Georgia over 16 years ago.