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Next Best Thing<\/strong><\/p>\n Our parents were astronauts <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sergio A. Ortiz<\/strong> is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and 2016 Best of the Net nominee. 2nd place in the 2016 Ram\u00f3n Ataz Annual Poetry Competition sponsored by Alaire publishing house. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in FRIGG, Tipton Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys,<\/em> and Bitterzeot Magazine.<\/em>\u00a0 He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Next Best Thing Our parents were astronauts of two extremes. Every vacant lot where we used to play started boiling over, so we grew up (in word only) against the prognosis of a possible plague of perverts arriving to snatch us. We were unlabeled objects on the pavement sculpting our silhouettes for […]<\/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-14861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14861","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=14861"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15222,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14861\/revisions\/15222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nof two extremes.
\nEvery vacant lot
\nwhere we used to play
\nstarted boiling over, so
\nwe grew up (in word only)
\nagainst the prognosis
\nof a possible plague
\nof perverts arriving
\nto snatch us.
\nWe were unlabeled objects
\non the pavement
\nsculpting our silhouettes
\nfor the trap,
\nbabbling and babbling
\nuntil we vomited
\nthe true value of silence.
\nAt the end of the space race
\nreality always exceeds fiction.<\/p>\n