{"id":3723,"date":"2012-12-15T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2012-12-15T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=3723"},"modified":"2012-12-12T15:11:48","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T15:11:48","slug":"ruth-stacey-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/ruth-stacey-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Stacey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fleeces<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The conversation drips like laudanum<br \/>\nfrom a thick glass bottle;<\/p>\n<p>they are sheep butting heads in a field<br \/>\nof grass comparison: who has the best grass?<\/p>\n<p>Are our lambs at the right school<br \/>\nto get the high results to land<br \/>\nthe correct job to buy the<br \/>\nmost grass \u2013<\/p>\n<p>I just like to smoke grass.<\/p>\n<p>The woman opposite me picks the poppy<br \/>\nseeds from her cake and licks the yellow<br \/>\ncrumbs that are left; her tongue is grey.<\/p>\n<p>The coffee is steaming.<br \/>\nIf I don\u2019t leave soon this will kill the ink<br \/>\nbird I keep in my underwear.<\/p>\n<p>Instead I take the butter knife<br \/>\nand cut a diagonal slice from my stomach:<br \/>\nwhite rubber drips and collects in my lap.<\/p>\n<p>I shape it into a bowl and fill it<br \/>\nwith the brown sugar lumps from the heap<br \/>\nin the centre of the table.<\/p>\n<p>The cotton tablecloth keeps trying to rise<br \/>\nup from the polished dark wood and become<br \/>\na ghost<\/p>\n<p>but I keep my fingers on it, firmly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mermaidsdrown.blogspot.com\/\">Ruth Stacey<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong> writes poems in the fleeting spaces between motherhood and studying Native American Literature. It is not the easiest way to be a writer, but it is her way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Fleeces The conversation drips like laudanum from a thick glass bottle; they are sheep butting heads in a field of grass comparison: who has the best grass? Are our lambs at the right school to get the high results to land the correct job to buy the most grass \u2013 I just [&hellip;]<\/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-3723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3723","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=3723"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3725,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3723\/revisions\/3725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}