<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Potluck<\/strong><\/p>\n What do you bring to the table?<\/p>\n A bunch of sweet-smelling herbs a loaf of bread studded with seeds a cake stuck with candles ablaze a page torn from a notebook where a child a map to buried treasure a promise to do better <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Robert Boucheron<\/strong> grew up in Syracuse and Schenectady, NY. He has worked as an architect in New York City and Charlottesville, VA. His short stories and essays appear in Bangalore Review, Fiction International, Litro, London Journal of Fiction, New Haven Review, Poydras Review, Short Fiction, <\/em>and other magazines.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Potluck What do you bring to the table? A bunch of sweet-smelling herbs in a clenched fist, a salad of green leaves plucked today and drenched in tears, a loaf of bread studded with seeds as hard as pearls, a serrated knife with teeth that cut to the bone, a cake stuck […]<\/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-15255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15255","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=15255"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15335,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15255\/revisions\/15335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nin a clenched fist,
\na salad of green leaves plucked today
\nand drenched in tears,<\/p>\n
\nas hard as pearls,
\na serrated knife with teeth
\nthat cut to the bone,<\/p>\n
\nlike a forest fire,
\na bottle of pink champagne
\nand a corkscrew,<\/p>\n
\nhas drawn a monster,
\na bag filled with all the materials needed
\nto make a bomb,<\/p>\n
\ndrawn in blood,
\na song composed of shards
\nfrom a broken heart,<\/p>\n
\nnext time,
\na list of reasons why
\nyou cannot stay.<\/p>\n