{"id":16251,"date":"2018-05-03T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=16251"},"modified":"2018-04-04T13:07:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T13:07:55","slug":"richard-lewis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/richard-lewis\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Lewis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tattoo<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I said my goodbyes last night. Stood naked<br \/>\nfull length at the mirror fossiled with fingerprints;<br \/>\nstudying the canvas of my left arm and chest as if<br \/>\nit were an old friend I knew I wouldn&#8217;t see again.<br \/>\nHe asks if I&#8217;m ready. His needle, my skin: two magnets<br \/>\npoised like two teens about to kiss for the first time.<br \/>\nHis latex fingers, albino wrinkled lizards, rub against<br \/>\nmy arm with the smell of hospital waiting rooms. I don&#8217;t<br \/>\nthink of what he&#8217;s adding, but what he&#8217;s taking away.<br \/>\nRubbing me clean with the residue ink and blood<br \/>\ndroplets.His pen of adrenaline aggrevating a nest<br \/>\nof wasps on my upper arm. He asks why: casually, bored,<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s not much I can answer with he hasn&#8217;t heard before.<br \/>\nI tell him I am digging myself out of my own skin, piece by piece,<br \/>\nlike fingernails digging out of a grave; or wiping away dirt<br \/>\nfrom a window, unsure of what I&#8217;m going to find inside.<br \/>\nHe pauses, mutters under his breath <i>..mate<\/i>, then continues.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><strong>Richard Lewis<\/strong> is from Swansea, currently living\u00a0 in Cardiff. He won 2nd prize in the 2015 Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award, and has had work placed in publications such as <em>London Grip<\/em> and<em> Cheva<\/em>l. He is currently working on his first poetry collection.<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tattoo I said my goodbyes last night. Stood naked full length at the mirror fossiled with fingerprints; studying the canvas of my left arm and chest as if it were an old friend I knew I wouldn&#8217;t see again. He asks if I&#8217;m ready. His needle, my skin: two magnets poised like [&hellip;]<\/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-16251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16251","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=16251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16252,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16251\/revisions\/16252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}