{"id":350,"date":"2011-08-17T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=350"},"modified":"2011-08-17T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T11:00:00","slug":"christopher-crawford-on-giving-the-big-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/christopher-crawford-on-giving-the-big-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Crawford on 'Giving the Big News'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giving the Big News<\/span><\/p>\n

There were two kids like me
     and someone\u2018s curly-headed younger brother by the stream, in the mulch      
          of sparrow skulls, wet porn and  rotten blankets in the weeds.
 I whispered to the brother that
     poison rats, special \u2018cause you can\u2019t see them<\/span>
          can\u2019t feel their bite,<\/span>
 hide in the branches all around, and you will know       <\/span>
      if you\u2019re bit when I rub the palm of your hand with a dock-leaf:<\/span>
           your skin will  stain,<\/span>
 you want to see green, if it comes out yellow <\/span>
     you\u2018re dead<\/span> – and I had a buttercup flower screwed inside the leaf.                             
          So after he\u2019d turned his hand over and looked inside
  I stood and listened to the small screams
and the snap of bracken breaking in the dark
  get further away. And even now I don\u2018t know
     if there\u2018s a right way to tell somebody,
          a way to understand.
<\/span>



*Christopher Crawford<\/span> was born in Glasgow. His poems, essays and translations have most recently appeared in RATTLE, The Cortland Review, Agenda, Eyewear,The Literateur, Orbis<\/span> and Envo<\/span>i.<\/span>
<\/font>

This poem has previously appeared in Now Culture<\/span><\/span><\/font>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giving the Big News There were two kids like me     and someone\u2018s curly-headed younger brother by the stream, in the mulch                of sparrow skulls, wet porn and  rotten blankets in the weeds. I whispered to the brother that     poison rats, special \u2018cause you can\u2019t see them          can\u2019t feel their bite, hide in the branches all around, […]<\/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-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","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=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}