{"id":58,"date":"2012-01-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=58"},"modified":"2012-01-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T12:00:00","slug":"tess-jollys-the-hatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/tess-jollys-the-hatch\/","title":{"rendered":"Tess Jolly's 'The Hatch'"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hatch<\/span>
  <\/span>
Each night I do the rounds, <\/span>
monitor hearts\u2019 contractions <\/span>
 <\/span>
by lamplight\u2019s gleam, press nerves <\/span>
down crumpled spines <\/span>
 <\/span>
and wrap skin round bones <\/span>
as paper holds a watermark\u2019s ghost,<\/span>
 <\/span>
graft cells onto glass-bound wings.<\/span>
I feed drops from a pipette <\/span>
 <\/span>
to soft beaks: they mewl and bleat, <\/span>
furl wrinkled fists around my little finger, <\/span>
 <\/span>
lift oversized heads to the moon. <\/span>
When slack muscles strengthen <\/span>
 <\/span>
I cup them to the hatch <\/span>
carved beneath the eaves, watch silhouettes <\/span>
 <\/span>
thrash from my open palm.<\/span>
My shoulder-blades bristle and bruise<\/span>
 <\/span>
as I hunch in a suit of feathers,<\/span>
transfer new blood to empty tubes.<\/span>



*Tess Jolly<\/span> lives in West Sussex with her partner and two young children. She has had work forthcoming in <\/span>Iota, The North<\/span> and <\/span><\/font>Magma<\/span><\/font><\/span> and was highly commended in last year's <\/span> Mslexia<\/span> Women's Poetry Competition. <\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hatch  Each night I do the rounds, monitor hearts\u2019 contractions  by lamplight\u2019s gleam, press nerves down crumpled spines  and wrap skin round bones as paper holds a watermark\u2019s ghost, graft cells onto glass-bound wings.I feed drops from a pipette  to soft beaks: they mewl and bleat, furl wrinkled fists around my little finger,  lift oversized […]<\/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-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","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=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}