{"id":10543,"date":"2016-04-27T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=10543"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:05:32","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:05:32","slug":"ruth-stacey-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/ruth-stacey-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Stacey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mental Health Animals<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Between us your depression and my anxiety;<br \/>\nsuch slippery things to articulate \u2013 yet I try.<\/p>\n<p>You, a creature sat curled into himself, naked,<br \/>\nmuscled, not a weak man but a hare-man.<br \/>\nArms folded, long ears and face drooped:<br \/>\nblocking out everyone, but especially<\/p>\n<p>me \u2013 a woman whose anxiety is a white horse,<br \/>\npale in a dark green field. It is a pastel soft<br \/>\nnight, I am wearing a cherry-red dress, bare<br \/>\nfooted \u2013 my uneasy horse is outside myself,<\/p>\n<p>body trembling as there are no stars visible.<br \/>\nThe heart cries: where are the Plough<br \/>\nand the Pleiades? I hold her muzzle close<br \/>\nto my cheek to calm her \u2013 don\u2019t pant so,<\/p>\n<p>don\u2019t pant my dear one. Your hare doesn\u2019t<br \/>\nnotice my withers flickering or hear<br \/>\nmy breath come like gasps of steam<br \/>\nin the cold, dark air that surrounds us both.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ruth Stacey\u00a0<\/strong> writes poems in the fleeting spaces between motherhood and studying Native American Literature. It is not the easiest way to be a writer, but it is her way.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/ruthstacey.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This is her website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Mental Health Animals Between us your depression and my anxiety; such slippery things to articulate \u2013 yet I try. You, a creature sat curled into himself, naked, muscled, not a weak man but a hare-man. Arms folded, long ears and face drooped: blocking out everyone, but especially me \u2013 a woman whose anxiety is [&hellip;]<\/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":[135,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543","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=10543"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23810,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10543\/revisions\/23810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}