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The Borders of a Man<\/strong><\/p>\n My father was My father was once My father knew My father canaled My father was And <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rachel L. McMullen<\/strong> is a teacher, freelance writer, editor, and poet. Her work can be found in Oracle Fine Arts Review, Eunoia Review, Three Line Poetry, Unbroken Journal<\/em>, and elsewhere. She is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of Random Sample Review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Borders of a Man My father was a concrete man: welded hard by ash and stone, unfeeling like a rock paperweighted on shores farther than the edges my childhood can remember. My father was once the god of mystery in the stories I used to write for myself, an over-bent hatchet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10302,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299\/revisions\/10302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\na concrete man:
\nwelded hard by ash and stone,
\nunfeeling like a rock
\npaperweighted on shores
\nfarther than the edges
\nmy childhood can remember.<\/p>\n
\nthe god of mystery
\nin the stories
\nI used to write for myself,
\nan over-bent hatchet edging
\nthe manicured borders
\nof a man
\nI never knew.<\/p>\n
\nthe strength of silver fencing,
\nthe wrought iron distress
\nof projection, like home movies
\nshifting in a light
\nthat existed a second
\nbefore my eye could
\npicture it.<\/p>\n
\nunder the illusion of sanctity,
\nfought tooth and nail and church
\nacross the topography
\nof a self\u2014dredged
\non the other side
\nof memory\u2019s resulting truth.<\/p>\n
\na lighted buoy
\non a rolling length
\nof red seas and waves
\ncurled into themselves
\nby an unstable gravity
\nkindled in the mind
\nof a lost impression.<\/p>\n
\nI was
\nalways on
\nthe margins,
\njust past the outer rim
\nof a place
\nthat never
\nexisted.<\/p>\n