<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He Arrives Home Drunk (with Stage Directions) <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Robert Nisbet<\/strong> published short stories (100 of them in total) between 1975 and 2005, before turning then to poetry. His work has appeared recently in magazines like Smiths Knoll, Other Poetry and Orbis, and on the London Grip website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He Arrives Home Drunk (with Stage Directions) He is downstage right, half-sitting on, half-across an armchair, in a fairly slobbed-out bodily situation. The light from the neon strip is garish. She enters upstage left and walks quietly towards him but moving in a slight arc to the left before gazing down at him. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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-3027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027","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=3027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3030,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027\/revisions\/3030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>
\nHe is downstage right, half-sitting on,
\nhalf-across an armchair,
\nin a fairly slobbed-out bodily situation.
\nThe light from the neon strip is garish.
\nShe enters upstage left
\nand walks quietly towards him
\nbut moving in a slight arc to the left
\nbefore gazing down at him. She shifts her elbows
\nslightly, as if about to fold her arms,
\nthen lets her arms fall. She leans forward
\nand sniffs a couple of times. Her lips move slightly
\nin an unheard phrase. \u00a0There is a ten-pound note
\npushing a crumpled way out of his shirt pocket
\nand she slides it loose, before going to the sideboard
\n(upstage right), folding the note neatly
\nand stowing it in a biscuit barrel.
\nShe comes back downstage and tries for a moment
\nto straighten his leg, which is spreadeagled
\nhalf-across the chair arm. His leg drops with a crash
\nand she skips, as if startled.
\nShe tries for a while to straighten his head and neck,
\nbefore crossing to the other chair (downstage left),
\nto bring back a cushion \u00a0to protect his head
\nfrom the worst of its crick. For a moment
\nshe seems about to straighten his tie, but leaves that,
\nand then she does fold her arms and her lips move
\nin some sort of murmur.
\nShe crosses back to the doorway (upstage left),
\nturns off the strip lighting and switches on
\na small side lamp. Exit, upstage left.
\nHe lies quite still, the room now lit
\nwith a low glow.<\/p>\n