{"id":1280,"date":"2008-06-20T13:59:16","date_gmt":"2008-06-20T13:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2008-06-20T13:59:16","modified_gmt":"2008-06-20T13:59:16","slug":"bottle-bank-by-helen-pletts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/bottle-bank-by-helen-pletts\/","title":{"rendered":"Bottle Bank by Helen Pletts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bottle Bank<\/span>
 <\/span>
 <\/span>
A lean trousered scrabble;<\/span>
Pressed aside the green-breast-curve, toe-tipped<\/span>
Arched form a-gape reaching,<\/span>
Visage-crimson-cold.<\/span>
A jagged white slit creases the cheek;<\/span>
And the human bright-blue-eye<\/span>
Echoes love lost, the pricelessness of heart;<\/span>
Scattered, like the glass shards<\/span>
You hopelessly filter. Your stick twists<\/span>
But it won't stretch, nor grasp without prehensile<\/span>
Tendency, the bottle's neck.<\/span>
 <\/span>
 <\/span>
 <\/span>
\u2022 Helen Pletts was born in the UK but has lived in Prague in the Czech Republic for the last four years. She says “My experience of living here has provided me with most of the inspiration for my current writing. The man I wrote the poem about is still alive, although he seems to always be drunk. He leans in to the bottle bank to get the bottles that may not have smashed on their way down \u2013 tries to retrieve them with his stick \u2013 then takes them to the supermarket for the returns money. I thought he would perish the winter I first saw him doing this – either from falling in head first, or from the extreme cold \u2013 minus 20+ on some days (winter 2005) so I gave him some money \u2013 this was right at the point I looked closely into his eyes and realised that he was struggling with something else maybe \u2013 the something else that had driven him to trying to drink himself to death. His eyes were the most incredible blue. I couldn't get home fast enough to write the poem.”<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bottle Bank  A lean trousered scrabble;Pressed aside the green-breast-curve, toe-tippedArched form a-gape reaching,Visage-crimson-cold.A jagged white slit creases the cheek;And the human bright-blue-eyeEchoes love lost, the pricelessness of heart;Scattered, like the glass shardsYou hopelessly filter. Your stick twistsBut it won't stretch, nor grasp without prehensileTendency, the bottle's neck.   \u2022 Helen Pletts was born in the UK but has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}