{"id":15835,"date":"2018-03-11T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=15835"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:36:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:36:05","slug":"hannah-linden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/hannah-linden\/","title":{"rendered":"Hannah Linden"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nAbove the Living Room Fire<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone had that painting, didn’t they?
\nWell, everyone we knew round here.
\nBut not everyone felt as proud of it.
\nNot everyone’s mum looked like her<\/p>\n

so that there was a nod, an embarrassed look down
\nas a man’s eye swept the painting’s cleavage;
\nor weighed the weight of the ponytail
\nin their mind’s hand. And she took<\/p>\n

the exotic location, the brown eyes
\nthe glisten of her perfect skin
\nand wore them over her stretch-marks
\nover the blush on her legs<\/p>\n

from sitting too close to the open fire.
\nI wanted her to have that far-flung sky
\nthe view out of the door of the painting.
\nI wanted her to be anywhere but here,<\/p>\n

maybe, as a sensible child, even more
\nthan she did. When we left, in a hurry,
\nmissing the demolition men
\nby days, leaving Dad, and toys<\/p>\n

still on the shelf above the kitchen door,
\nshe must have stayed in the painting,
\nmustn’t she? She must have
\nfelt the walls cave in on her.<\/p>\n

I wonder if she felt where
\nmy fingers had touched her hand once
\nwhen no one was looking. How I’d loved
\nher and then forgot I had.<\/p>\n

Published widely, Hannah Linden<\/strong> was highly commended in the Prole Laureate competition 2015, and working with Gram Joel Davies, won the 2015 Cheltenham Poetry Festival Compound Competition. Her debut collection, ‘Wolf Daughter’, will explore the impact of parental suicide. Twitter: @hannahl1n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Above the Living Room Fire Everyone had that painting, didn’t they? Well, everyone we knew round here. But not everyone felt as proud of it. Not everyone’s mum looked like her so that there was a nod, an embarrassed look down as a man’s eye swept the painting’s cleavage; or weighed the weight of […]<\/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":[137,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15835","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=15835"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16334,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15835\/revisions\/16334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}