{"id":84,"date":"2012-02-20T16:47:46","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T16:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=84"},"modified":"2012-02-20T16:47:46","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T16:47:46","slug":"josk-ekroy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/josk-ekroy\/","title":{"rendered":"Josk Ekroy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter VII<\/span>

The love-making of crocodiles<\/span>
     takes place under<\/span>
the sludge-dark water. They warble,<\/span>
splatter and rub the undersides<\/span>
of yellow-white jaws while spearhead<\/span>
      whip-tails flounder. <\/span>

She elevates her head, they nudge<\/span>
   with questing snouts,<\/span>
he strokes her body\u2019s roughcast ridge<\/span>
with both forelegs. They arch their backs,<\/span>
blow bubbles, play games of twinesnake,<\/span>
   then with half-shut<\/span>

eyes, he surveys her, positions<\/span>
   her with webbed feet<\/span>
and mounts. Buoyant copulation<\/span>
lasts for fifteen minutes. She lays<\/span>
her eggs in sand some yards away,<\/span>
   well out of sight.<\/span>

The lovemaking of turtles takes<\/span>
   place off the shore<\/span>
of their birth. They\u2019ve found their way back<\/span>
over one thousand five hundred <\/span>
miles, navigated the sun\u2019s road,<\/span>
   by earth\u2019s threadbare <\/span>

magnetic field. The males cruise, stir,<\/span>
   quarrel over<\/span>
arriving females. The victor <\/span>
bites her shell, clasps her carapace<\/span>
with his flippers. He forces her<\/span>
    down, she hovers, <\/span>

sinks, strives to rise to breathe the air.<\/span>
   They play and plough<\/span>
the water for six tumbling hours,<\/span>
till the male breaks off to patrol, <\/span>
but she must climb her domicile,<\/span>
   the beach, to lay.<\/span>

The love-making of humans takes<\/span>
   place deep among<\/span>
a field of straggling charlock<\/span>
whose petals fleck them with mustard,<\/span>
or in the woods kissed by bistort.<\/span>
   Birth is in Spring.<\/span>



*Josh Ekroy<\/span>'s poems appear in <\/span>Smith's Knoll, Rialto, The SHOp<\/span>, and many others. He won second prize in the Doire Press Chapbook Competition 2012 and has a poem in <\/span>The Best of British Poetry 2011<\/span> (Salt).<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter VIIThe love-making of crocodiles     takes place underthe sludge-dark water. They warble,splatter and rub the undersidesof yellow-white jaws while spearhead      whip-tails flounder. She elevates her head, they nudge   with questing snouts,he strokes her body\u2019s roughcast ridgewith both forelegs. They arch their backs,blow bubbles, play games of twinesnake,   then with half-shuteyes, he surveys her, positions   her […]<\/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-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","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=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}