<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After the Storm<\/strong><\/p>\n Wading knee-deep They look like two fish In the package store Wading back home Three days of rain <\/p>\n After the Storm Wading knee-deep for six-pack and cigarettes I watch my feet, three inches from my knees, under a foot of water negotiate the curb. They look like two fish hugging the tarmac bottom, trying to turn some silt onto themselves. Their eyes stare up at me, trailing four broken-off hooks. […]<\/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-12508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12508","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=12508"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13312,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12508\/revisions\/13312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nfor six-pack and cigarettes
\nI watch my feet,
\nthree inches from my knees,
\nunder a foot of water
\nnegotiate the curb.<\/p>\n
\nhugging the tarmac bottom,
\ntrying to turn some silt
\nonto themselves. Their eyes
\nstare up at me, trailing
\nfour broken-off hooks.<\/p>\n
\nmy sneakers slap-slap
\nbetween the aisles of tinned fruit
\nand cornflakes. Mrs. Morales
\nwraps up the dry goods
\nin a mermaid\u2019s purse.<\/p>\n
\nI stop while a car swims
\npast the front of our house,
\na bottle-nose Chevy
\nsending ripples
\nright up to the screen door.<\/p>\n
\nhave filled the garden up.
\nThe clothes line is no higher
\nthan a tennis net.
\nA pelican sits on the fence-pole,
\nsurprised at itself.<\/p>\n
\nMichael Paul Hogan<\/strong> is a poet, journalist and literary essayist whose work has appeared extensively in the US, UK, India and China. His most recent collection, Chinese Bolero<\/em>, illustrated by the painter Li Bin, was published in 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"