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Answers<\/strong><\/p>\n A lone slightly-crushed blue M&M A student writes with her right hand Cheeks rest on fists. Fingertips scratch Knees bounce as hands move blue into collars and elbows, adjust ponytails, in the green magnolia boughs outside <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nathanael O\u2019Reilly<\/strong> is an Irish-Australian residing in Texas. His books include Preparations for Departur<\/a>e, Distance,<\/a> Cult, Suburban Exile<\/em> and Symptoms of Homesickness<\/em>. His poetry has appeared in publications from twelve countries, including Antipodes, Cordite, Headstuff, Mascara, Skylight 47, Snorkel, Verity La <\/em>and The Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Answers A lone slightly-crushed blue M&M rests on the classroom\u2019s grey carpet between rows of wooden chairs. A student writes with her right hand while inserting two fingers of her left into her mouth, withdrawing pink gum. Cheeks rest on fists. Fingertips scratch stubble, tuck hair behind ears. Muscles loudly suck mucus […]<\/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-19681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19681","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=19681"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19949,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19681\/revisions\/19949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nrests on the classroom\u2019s grey carpet
\nbetween rows of wooden chairs.<\/p>\n
\nwhile inserting two fingers of her left
\ninto her mouth, withdrawing pink gum.<\/p>\n
\nstubble, tuck hair behind ears. Muscles
\nloudly suck mucus back into nostrils.<\/p>\n
\npens left to right across lined paper.
\nEyes glance at the clock. Students cough<\/p>\n
\nreverse black baseball caps, rotate wrists,
\ncrack knuckles, search for answers<\/p>\n
\nthe window, on the off-white ceiling tiles,
\namongst leaves of grass on manicured lawns.<\/p>\n