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Nocturne by Tea<\/strong><\/p>\n You sit alone on the deck, under the night stars <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ralph Monday<\/strong> is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN., where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses. He has been published widely in over 50 journals including The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review<\/em> and many others.\u00a0 His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Houghton Mifflin\u2019s \u201cBest of\u201d Anthologies, as well as other awards. A chapbook, All American Girl and Other Poems<\/em>, was published in July 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nocturne by Tea You sit alone on the deck, under the night stars that stir no romantic wonder, just dim night lights that fade with day as everything does. They may as well be lamps studded to the firmament as the ancients believed, or icy little guideposts pointing backwards to where you […]<\/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-8360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8360","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=8360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8363,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8360\/revisions\/8363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthat stir no romantic wonder, just dim night lights
\nthat fade with day as everything does. They may
\nas well be lamps studded to the firmament as the
\nancients believed, or icy little guideposts pointing
\nbackwards to where you were, forward to where
\nyou must go. The time could be winter, uncertain,
\nfor certainty vanished with youth, the unknowing
\nexpansion of the universe. Animals make noises
\nout in the dark, they as definite as melting glaciers,
\nwhere both will dissolve with morning, the way
\na marriage thaws when the plug is pulled from the
\nrefrigerator. You observe all this, not as some chewed
\noracle in the grave, but through the conviction of hot
\ngreen tea that remains warm as you are warm, each
\nsip a liquid memory stored by taste buds. Curiously,
\nyou listen to sounds never heard that merge together
\nas clouds\u2014low throat rumble of a train, car horns,
\ndistant laughter, an owl\u2019s nocturnal song, the coyote\u2019s
\ncry\u2014fused only in illusion, till torn apart by the mind
\nseeking patterns the way seismic waves are felt but
\nnot seen, the way a teenager pines for love. This
\nshould be a celebration not a censure. You self-reprimand
\nas though you were a child talking to self,
\nand indeed wonder if the stars are glued to the sky.<\/p>\n