{"id":599,"date":"2010-03-22T16:13:28","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T16:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=599"},"modified":"2012-03-31T13:15:28","modified_gmt":"2012-03-31T13:15:28","slug":"matthew-howard-looses-a-bull-on-the-bowling-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/matthew-howard-looses-a-bull-on-the-bowling-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Howard looses a bull on the bowling green"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bull on the Bowling Green<\/span>

We carried the bull\u2019s head all summer<\/span>
like a standard. That brute weight of clay,<\/span>
rough-rendered though stout-horned – <\/span>

I\u2019d worked after Picasso in art class.<\/span>
The end of school; for our passing-out<\/span>
we camped by the disused rail tracks,<\/span>

deep-cut, beyond the smear of town\u2019s lights.<\/span>
We drenched ourselves in cider and sherry<\/span>
while the bull\u2019s head darkened with us<\/span>

by the fire. Past midnight I remember <\/span>
how we blew into town for fast food,<\/span>
craving salt and the chance of a girl.<\/span>

That town of sheltered accommodation, <\/span>
benches around the bowling green;<\/span>
Pensioner\u2019s leagues, pressed whites,<\/span>

summers of iced lemonade.<\/span>
Someone spoke of the rules, the pin,<\/span>
the need to work with the bias of each bowl.<\/span>

Who kicked-in the picket gate<\/span>
I don\u2019t know, although we all danced,<\/span>
stamped our rough flamenco on the green –<\/span>

each footfall a cornada; marked <\/span>
the lawn with such passion; loosed <\/span>
the humid reek of earth to the night.<\/span>



* Matthew Howard<\/span> lives and works near Norwich and is currently taking the Poetry MA with MMU, has had poems in magazines including The North, Magma, Stride and The Rialto.<\/span>
\u00a0<\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bull on the Bowling GreenWe carried the bull\u2019s head all summerlike a standard. That brute weight of clay,rough-rendered though stout-horned – I\u2019d worked after Picasso in art class.The end of school; for our passing-outwe camped by the disused rail tracks,deep-cut, beyond the smear of town\u2019s lights.We drenched ourselves in cider and sherrywhile the bull\u2019s […]<\/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-599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599","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=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1928,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions\/1928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}