{"id":265,"date":"2011-05-23T15:34:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T15:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=265"},"modified":"2011-05-23T15:34:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T15:34:00","slug":"abegail-morleys-family-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/abegail-morleys-family-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Abegail Morley's 'Family Album'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Family Album\u2028\u2028<\/span>

On the scan you are tiny – a whiteness<\/span>
\u2028in a dark sky. Your breath steams in patches,\u2028<\/span>
ghost white strokes on the photograph.\u2028<\/span>

(I want to step into the picture to see what happens.<\/span>
\u2028I want to go between the blackness and the clouds).\u2028\u2028<\/span>

You stitched yourself to me with fisherman's nylon,\u2028<\/span>
sharp needles where your nails should have been.<\/span>
\u2028But even in my warm belly you were unformed.<\/span>

When your breath left, your eyes were still closed.\u2028<\/span>
You would not have seen a thing. <\/span>
I turn the page -\u2028 nobody moved, nobody smiled.\u2028\u2028<\/span>

(I want to pull the dark over me and find you there:\u2028<\/span>
you at two, at five, at twelve).<\/span>

\u2028\u2028My tongue wraps itself around you, grows limp\u2028<\/span>
when I speak your name. There is urgency in my loss.\u2028<\/span>
I want to unwrap it, to see it, to release it.<\/span>

\u2028\u2028My body yearns for you at night. It cries.\u2028<\/span>
At the end of the darkness is the thread of my child.<\/span>
\u2028I carry the weight of the dead.\u2028<\/span>

(I want to place my hands around your face,<\/span>
\u2028my fingers stretching as you smile. My child).<\/span>




*Abegail Morley<\/span>\u2019s collection <\/span>How to Pour Madness into a Teacup<\/span><\/a> was shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection. She is guest poetry editor at <\/span>The New Writer<\/span>, her work appears in anthologies and journals including the <\/span>Financial Times<\/span> and <\/span>The Spectator<\/span>.  She blogs here<\/a> <\/span>
<\/font>\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family Album\u2028\u2028On the scan you are tiny – a whiteness\u2028in a dark sky. Your breath steams in patches,\u2028ghost white strokes on the photograph.\u2028(I want to step into the picture to see what happens.\u2028I want to go between the blackness and the clouds).\u2028\u2028You stitched yourself to me with fisherman's nylon,\u2028sharp needles where your nails should have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}