{"id":665,"date":"2010-05-06T18:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T18:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=665"},"modified":"2010-05-06T18:42:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T18:42:00","slug":"jon-taits-father-saw-hendrix-and-the-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/jon-taits-father-saw-hendrix-and-the-who\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Tait's father saw Hendrix and The Who"},"content":{"rendered":"


Poacher\u2019s Pocket<\/span>
 <\/span>
Crunching slowly through brittle frosted grass<\/span>
with breath pulled tight in the lungs,<\/span>
the moon peering through gnarled tree branches<\/span>
& glinting icicles thicker than a finger<\/span>
while the green waxed jacket snaps like a sail.<\/span>
 <\/span>
My fathaa, hair golden & curly as Roger Daltry,<\/span>
slipped the cleek from his coat sleeve<\/span>
& bent by a black pool with ice<\/span>
sculpted into shapes sleek as glass<\/span>
with the rush of the river in his ears like guitar static.<\/span>
 <\/span>
He saw Hendrix and The Who<\/span>
at the Isle of Wight festival<\/span>
in flared jeans & black cowboy boots & red t-shirt tan<\/span>
& when I ask him how far has was from the stage<\/span>
he jokes \u2018<\/span>aboot Birkenhead<\/span>.\u2019<\/span>
 <\/span>
It was a winter of power cuts, blackouts,<\/span>
of orange candlelight flickering long shadows<\/span>
up bare woodchip walls in thick silence<\/span>
& my father made his way home through the darkness,<\/span>
the dead weight of a gaffed trout in his poacher\u2019s pocket<\/span>
thumping his ribs in the regular rhythm of his stride.<\/span>


* Jon Tait<\/span> is a drunk, sheep rustler and mystic from Coquetdale, Northumberland. His latest chapbook <\/span>Midnight at the snake motel<\/span> is out from Proganda Press in the USA.<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poacher\u2019s Pocket Crunching slowly through brittle frosted grasswith breath pulled tight in the lungs,the moon peering through gnarled tree branches& glinting icicles thicker than a fingerwhile the green waxed jacket snaps like a sail. My fathaa, hair golden & curly as Roger Daltry,slipped the cleek from his coat sleeve& bent by a black pool with icesculpted into […]<\/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-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665","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=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}