{"id":19942,"date":"2015-05-29T10:22:25","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T17:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19942"},"modified":"2015-05-29T10:23:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T17:23:49","slug":"because-you-have-been-a-feast-for-me-is-part-of-the-2015-litbulb-literary-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19942","title":{"rendered":"“Because You Have Been a Feast for Me” is Part of the 2015 LitBulb Literary Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"litbulb<\/a>I am thrilled that my poem, “Because You Have Been a Feast for Me” has been included in the 2015 LitBulb\u00a0Festival<\/a>, an international, online gathering of literary work. Rather than gather all the included works onto one website, each author will be hosting her or his own work, with a link you can follow to\u00a0read the\u00a0other writers<\/a> whose work has been included.\u00a0It’s a chance to take in some of what’s being written all over the English-speaking world. Meanwhile, here’s my poem.<\/p>\n

\n

Because You Have Been A Feast For Me<\/h2>\n

Those yellow roses on the piano,
\ngift from last night\u2019s guest,
\nwilted while we slept, prisoners
\nwaiting for their morning execution.
\nAcross the table, your face shines
\ndiamond hard, but when you stand
\nto get our tea from the kitchen,
\nyour body is a barely clenched fist
\nraised trembling against the blood they took,
\nand the urine, and what you\u2019re waiting
\nto hear them tell you today
\nthey already knew they would find.<\/p>\n

We manage to avoid words,
\nspread silence between us like a net
\nover which we keep our fear in play,
\nhitting it back and forth
\nwith a smile or a nodded head
\nor the raised eyebrows we each hope
\nwill pull the voice from the other\u2019s mouth.
\nI am hungry to feed you, to offer
\nat the boundary my skin is
\nbetween the mechanisms of who I am
\nand the air shaped by these four walls
\nwhatever I can to nourish the bloom
\nwithered in you by those fluorescent lights
\nthey refused to let us sit together beneath.<\/p>\n

Forget the nurse who missed four times
\nsearching for a vein, the cold
\nthe doctor who would not look you in the eye
\nprobed you with, the accent you could not understand
\nwhen the office manager told you
\nto call for the results in a week.
\nRemember instead how yesterday,
\non the roof of the green building across the street,
\nthe solitary antenna we\u2019ve pitied for its loneliness
\nheld back from the height it strived for,
\nby the blue tail trailing in the wind,
\nthe orange helium balloon
\nescaping from the party
\nwe were not invited to
\nin the garden below us.<\/p>\n

Look now. See?
\nThe tail\u2019s still there.
\nThe balloon is gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am thrilled that my poem, “Because You Have Been a Feast for Me” has been included in the 2015 LitBulb\u00a0Festival, an international, online gathering of literary work. Rather than gather all the included works onto one website, each author … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19942"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19946,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19942\/revisions\/19946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}