{"id":20698,"date":"2019-12-19T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T08:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=20698"},"modified":"2020-12-14T15:59:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T15:59:13","slug":"penny-blackburn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/penny-blackburn\/","title":{"rendered":"Penny Blackburn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Lake Swim<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Though I don\u2019t like to put my head under,<br \/>\nI want to follow the thin nylon line<br \/>\nthat tethers the marker in place;<br \/>\nfinger-tap the concrete block anchoring<br \/>\nthe buoy to the lake bed.<br \/>\nI would continue into the soft-plock mud,<br \/>\nstir depths of silt to cloud about us like the waste of years.<\/p>\n<p>We tread water. We ripple out<br \/>\nthrough surface spiders and the shit of ducks.<br \/>\nWe watch the steady drill lines<br \/>\nof serious swimmers \u2013 capped and suited<br \/>\nfor their three stern miles around the course.<br \/>\nBlack bodies sleekly purposeful under frivolous-coloured tow floats.<br \/>\nWe are casual, we came without.<\/p>\n<p>We discuss what we would do.<br \/>\n\u201cI would hold your face up. I\u2019d shout.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Penny Blackburn<\/strong> lives in the North East of England and writes poetry and short fiction. Her publications include pieces online in <em>Bangor Literary Journal, Atrium <\/em>and<em> Picaroon<\/em> and in print with Paper Swans Press, Reader\u2019s Digest and Maytree Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lake Swim Though I don\u2019t like to put my head under, I want to follow the thin nylon line that tethers the marker in place; finger-tap the concrete block anchoring the buoy to the lake bed. I would continue into the soft-plock mud, stir depths of silt to cloud about us like the waste of [&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-20698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20698","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=20698"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24194,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20698\/revisions\/24194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}