{"id":1411,"date":"2008-10-09T09:28:13","date_gmt":"2008-10-09T09:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1411"},"modified":"2008-10-09T09:28:13","modified_gmt":"2008-10-09T09:28:13","slug":"martin-reed-is-looking-for-collateral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/martin-reed-is-looking-for-collateral\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Reed is looking for collateral"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLLATERAL<\/span>


What goes through my mind<\/span>
coughing dirt<\/span>
breathing dust.<\/span>

Soft swoon of her bedtime minutes<\/span>
giving way so sudden.<\/span>

Nothing at first<\/span>
but tinnitus crescendo<\/span>
swelling my head<\/span>
as I come to realising.<\/span>

A bedtime tale<\/span>
once upon a weapon is primed<\/span>
attack siren lullaby<\/span>
softly kissing gentle blast of lip on cheek<\/span>
approaching nothing<\/span>
but dark.<\/span>

Trawling the immediate debris<\/span>
and rooted in rubble<\/span>
her tiny hand and forearm<\/span>
planted.<\/span>

My forefinger tickles her palm<\/span>
it's what I do<\/span>
tickle her awake when she's pretending<\/span>
as she does<\/span>
imagining a response<\/span>
hearing her giggle.<\/span>

Hush baby sleep now.<\/span>


* Martin Reed's work has been published in Critical Quarterly<\/span>, a couple of erotic anthologies, on decongested.com<\/span> and elsewhere. He has work upcoming on elimae.com<\/span>. He's read live at Foyle's Bookshop. A member of Fiction Workhouse, he blogs ineptly at <\/span><\/font><\/span>www.worded.co.uk<\/a> <\/font> He'll be reading at Sparks, a flash fiction evening in Brighton, on 14 October – www.otherplaceproductions.co.uk<\/a>
<\/span><\/a>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COLLATERALWhat goes through my mindcoughing dirtbreathing dust.Soft swoon of her bedtime minutesgiving way so sudden.Nothing at firstbut tinnitus crescendoswelling my headas I come to realising.A bedtime taleonce upon a weapon is primedattack siren lullabysoftly kissing gentle blast of lip on cheekapproaching nothingbut dark.Trawling the immediate debrisand rooted in rubbleher tiny hand and forearmplanted.My forefinger tickles […]<\/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-1411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411","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=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}