{"id":624,"date":"2010-04-09T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=624"},"modified":"2010-04-09T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T08:00:00","slug":"andrew-pidoux-is-stealing-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/andrew-pidoux-is-stealing-ducks\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Pidoux is stealing ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stealing Ducks<\/span>

The night farm was churning<\/span>
everything over, grinding its teeth\u2014<\/span>
darkness produced in hidden looms,<\/span>
spun through wriggling bobbins.<\/span>

You said we should get on with it,<\/span>
or expect to be caught. At the gate<\/span>
we had seen a set of sleeping jaws.<\/span>
It was the year\u2019s warmest night.<\/span>

The van we found contained<\/span>
a hundred ducks, braced upright,<\/span>
so still and quiet they surprised us\u2014<\/span>
only a low sleepless hissing<\/span>

of snake-necks and whistle-bills.<\/span>
Some toppled over the van\u2019s lip.<\/span>
We watched them go dumbly<\/span>
into a curtain of trees.<\/span>

The courtyard exploded false<\/span>
dawns on the walls. A dog whined.<\/span>
We slammed the van door closed,<\/span>
with six ducks in a sack, struggling.<\/span>

<\/p>\n

Andrew Pidoux<\/span> won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999, and <\/span>The Crashaw Prize<\/a> in 2009.  His collection, <\/span>Year of the Lion<\/span>, will be published by Salt later this year. He currently lives in Harlesden in west London.<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stealing DucksThe night farm was churningeverything over, grinding its teeth\u2014darkness produced in hidden looms,spun through wriggling bobbins.You said we should get on with it,or expect to be caught. At the gatewe had seen a set of sleeping jaws.It was the year\u2019s warmest night.The van we found containeda hundred ducks, braced upright,so still and quiet they […]<\/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-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","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=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}