<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sunflowers<\/strong><\/p>\n Bleary, lethargic, bumping along in this coach The sunflowers all stand, heads slumped, looking away from me, looking down; And then they are gone, history, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Elizabeth Gibson\u2019<\/strong>s work has been published in The Cadaverine, Sonder, Under the Fable, Visual Verse, Sincerely Magazine, Siblin\u00ed <\/em>and Ink, Sweat and Tears<\/em>. She was long-listed for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize. She is Fiction Editor at Miracle Magazine<\/em> and writes for Cuckoo Review<\/em> and The Mancunion<\/em>. Since 2012 she has been a Digital Reporter for Manchester Literature Festival. She studies IPML French and Spanish at the University of Manchester and has written a YA novel which she hopes will one day be published. She tweets at @Grizonne and can be found at http:\/\/elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.co.uk.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunflowers Bleary, lethargic, bumping along in this coach at eight whatever in the morning I see in a field there are plants, what are they, sunflowers, oh, haven\u2019t seen them for a while. You don\u2019t somehow expect to see something so perfect and grand growing wild; you imagine them in a hothouse […]<\/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-10881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10881","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=10881"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10883,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10881\/revisions\/10883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nat eight whatever in the morning
\nI see in a field there are plants, what are they, sunflowers,
\noh, haven\u2019t seen them for a while.
\nYou don\u2019t somehow expect to see something so perfect and grand
\ngrowing wild; you imagine them in a hothouse
\nor tenderly raised by a child from seeds they found hidden in a picture book
\nabout growing things.<\/p>\n
\nthey are in mourning, though for what I don\u2019t know. It is one
\nof the saddest sights in the world
\nand then my eyes shift along to the three men approaching, farmers,
\ntwo holding tools of some kind and the other \u2013 is that \u2013 a guitar?
\nIt seems too wondrous and Spanish to be true. Then we move closer and
\nin that moment, that they call red shift,
\nwhen a train passes you and its whistle blows\u00a0 momentarily lower,
\nI see that it is a gun, that they all have guns
\nand they are advancing
\ntowards the sunflowers
\nand the skinny dog with them trots along looking
\nlike he would rather not be up at eight whatever in the morning either.<\/p>\n
\nand the occupants of the next field are solar panels. Again, they glimmer with
\nalmost penetrating grief
\nand in the next field,
\njust another cuboid
\nof hay. It is emotionless, it has seen it all
\nbefore and I have seen it before
\nin so many fields, still, eternal,
\nreassuring,
\na totem.<\/p>\n