{"id":6388,"date":"2014-02-26T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=6388"},"modified":"2014-01-29T16:41:27","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T16:41:27","slug":"melanie-branton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/melanie-branton\/","title":{"rendered":"Melanie Branton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Overwhelming Catastrophic Dread<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Did I shut the door?<br \/>\nDid I shut the door?<\/p>\n<p>I am the gatekeeper,<br \/>\nshaman, celebrant,<br \/>\nI avert apocalypse<br \/>\nfifty times a day.<\/p>\n<p>Did I shut the door?<\/p>\n<p>Rubber-gloved soothsayer,<br \/>\nI divine strange dooms<br \/>\nin the pattern of dogs\u2019 mess<br \/>\non the pavement.<\/p>\n<p>Did I shut the door?<\/p>\n<p>I know a thousand subtle poisons \u2013<br \/>\nshoelaces, dishcloths, newspapers, chopping boards,<br \/>\nthe careless brush of strangers\u2019 hands.<br \/>\nJacobean in their cunning,<br \/>\ntheir venom is touchborne, airborne, thoughtborne.<br \/>\nThey murder by metonymy.<\/p>\n<p>I wield the potency of numbers:<br \/>\nthe amulet of washing three times,<br \/>\nthe blessing of counting light switches,<br \/>\nthe depthless curse of finishing the sudoku on a nine.<\/p>\n<p>Pandemonium hovers on my threshold.<\/p>\n<p>Did I shut the door?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Melanie Branton<\/strong> was born in Exeter. She has taught English and Drama in London and in Lodz, Poland, but now lives in North Somerset. Her work has been accepted by South, Light and LightenUp Online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Overwhelming Catastrophic Dread Did I shut the door? Did I shut the door? I am the gatekeeper, shaman, celebrant, I avert apocalypse fifty times a day. Did I shut the door? Rubber-gloved soothsayer, I divine strange dooms in the pattern of dogs\u2019 mess on the pavement. Did I shut the door? I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-6388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388","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=6388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6389,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388\/revisions\/6389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}