{"id":1322,"date":"2008-07-31T16:28:56","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T16:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2008-07-31T16:28:56","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T16:28:56","slug":"john-grey-is-in-a-strange-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/john-grey-is-in-a-strange-town\/","title":{"rendered":"John Grey is in a strange town"},"content":{"rendered":"

IN A STRANGE TOWN      <\/span>                            <\/span>
 <\/span>

How unfamiliar.                                                   <\/span>
A motel like a one room house I broke into.<\/span>
Television, three local channels,<\/span>
 <\/span>
feel like I'm stealing another city's news.<\/span>
A meal in a diner.<\/span>
Waitress, cook, act like they're begrudgingly<\/span>
 <\/span>
opening up the kitchen for me.<\/span>
They take my money<\/span>
but, as I pass it over,<\/span>
 <\/span>
it seems like foreign notes and coins.<\/span>
I almost apologize for that being all I have.<\/span>
And there's strangers on the streets enough<\/span>
 <\/span>
to cut a furrow in the brow.<\/span>
I don't know these people. They don't me.<\/span>
Never were strangers more an imposition.<\/span>
 <\/span>
I stare in windows of stores I'll never see again,<\/span>
wasting their displays.<\/span>
I cross streets with the flashing “Walk”<\/span>
 <\/span>
though if a car hit me it wouldn't matter<\/span>
because nobody could tell the cop my name.<\/span>
I return to the room I find only by its number<\/span>
 <\/span>
for its carpet, shades, would never call to me.<\/span>
Weird colored sheets and blankets. Odd wallpaper.<\/span>
Off comes my coat and shoes.<\/span>
 <\/span>
Down to something I'm surprised<\/span>
an alien mirror says is me.<\/span>
Maybe if I call home.<\/span>
 <\/span>
Maybe if I watch the tremor of my hand<\/span>
as it wraps around the receiver,<\/span>
like my nerve ends are trying to<\/span>
 <\/span>
reconstruct me from scratch.<\/span>
A familiar voice could stake me<\/span>
to some blueprints.<\/span>



\u2022 John Grey is from Providence, Rhode Island, and has been published recently in <\/span>Agni, Worcester Review,  South Carolina Review<\/span> and <\/span>The Pedestal<\/span>. <\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IN A STRANGE TOWN                                   How unfamiliar.                                                   A motel like a one room house I broke into.Television, three local channels, feel like I'm stealing another city's news.A meal in a diner.Waitress, cook, act like they're begrudgingly opening up the kitchen for me.They take my moneybut, as I pass it over, it seems like foreign notes and coins.I almost apologize […]<\/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-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","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=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}