{"id":19070,"date":"2019-05-19T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=19070"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:49:47","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:49:47","slug":"avril-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/avril-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Avril Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Aztec Love Song for Uprooted Flowers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I carry them to your house on my back,<br \/>\nuprooted flowers.<br \/>\nI am bent double with the weight of them,<br \/>\nof women torn from the soil, their roots mud<br \/>\nstem and sepal crushed<br \/>\nI carry them. I carry their scent, the scent of ash<br \/>\nand blood in my blood.<br \/>\nBent double with the weight of their fragility,<br \/>\nbuds unopened, roses full-blown<br \/>\ndiscarded, trampled on<br \/>\nI carry them.<\/p>\n<p>Their flower faces sit: geranium,<br \/>\nharebell, meadow-sweet,<br \/>\nin my classroom in this prison,<br \/>\nfoliage fluttering in the breeze<br \/>\nfrom the barely open window<br \/>\nI carry the leaf of them,<\/p>\n<p>bent double with the weight<br \/>\nof what we do to them,<br \/>\nhow we punish and incarcerate<br \/>\ncondemn to iron fallen blossom, uprooted<br \/>\nflowers I carry them<br \/>\non my back, to your house.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Avril Joy<\/strong> is currently writing a sequence of poems about her time working in a women&#8217;s prison. One of these &#8216;prison&#8217; poems, Skomm, won the 2019 York Mix poetry competition. Find out more at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avriljoy.com\/\">www.avriljoy.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Aztec Love Song for Uprooted Flowers I carry them to your house on my back, uprooted flowers. I am bent double with the weight of them, of women torn from the soil, their roots mud stem and sepal crushed I carry them. I carry their scent, the scent of ash and blood [&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":[138,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19070","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=19070"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19402,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19070\/revisions\/19402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}