<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Remorse<\/strong><\/p>\n Struck by an ice-cream vendor at age nineteen! Today I\u2019m not so sure. My eyes retrace <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nick Cooke<\/strong> has had poems published in a range of magazines, from Agenda <\/em>to Dream Catcher,<\/em> as well as on sundry websites. He is currently working on his first collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Remorse Struck by an ice-cream vendor at age nineteen! What a bumptious little prick I must have been to order a cone and then refuse to pay on grounds of cost, and in a simpering way watch as vanilla dribbled down his wrist. Without reflecting he drew back his free fist and […]<\/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-10910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910","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=10910"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10912,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910\/revisions\/10912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhat a bumptious little prick I must have been
\nto order a cone and then refuse to pay
\non grounds of cost, and in a simpering way
\nwatch as vanilla dribbled down his wrist.
\nWithout reflecting he drew back his free fist
\nand slammed it in my ribs like a cricket ball,
\na response I did not think I\u2019d earned at all \u2013<\/p>\n
\nbut seldom his livid loganberry face,
\nnor do I hear his panicked apology
\nwhen I threatened to fetch the constabulary
\n(a bluff I never meant him to believe).
\nInstead I see the liquid on his sleeve
\nand venture to compute the irritation.
\nIt is a sad and shameful calculation.<\/p>\n