<\/p>\n
Eleven Years Tasted Like a Thousand Year Old Chinese Egg<\/strong><\/p>\n eleven years tasted like I went to your house back to front Eleven Years Tasted Like a Thousand Year Old Chinese Egg eleven years tasted like a thousand-year old Chinese egg doorway cracked windows rusted at the seams– the nights grew thin and red summer gripped me in its fist then winter tricked your shadows into my eyes leaving imprints on walls the tall looking glass […]<\/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":[139,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9757","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=9757"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23786,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9757\/revisions\/23786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\na thousand-year old Chinese egg
\ndoorway cracked
\nwindows rusted at the seams–
\nthe nights grew thin and red
\nsummer gripped me in its fist
\nthen winter tricked your shadows into my eyes
\nleaving imprints on walls
\nthe tall looking glass
\nstaircase
\nsidewalks
\nwith rain and snow poured heavy like the China sea,<\/p>\n
\nghosts roamed behind the chiffon curtains
\nfaint but they left me breathless,
\nalways
\ndistance was a skeletal landscape stirred in smoke–
\nthis was heartache I knew
\nstill I came
\nand grieved
\nwoke to eat the black preserved egg
\nslept when the sky broke into yellow yolk on my lips and skin,<\/p>\n
\nI was narcotized with the kernels of your excess
\nyour painful sincerity
\nyour articulate cold–
\nnow I smoked your cigarettes
\ntasted the chemicals
\nmusky
\nrotten,
\nI blew out wisps of clouds
\nthe whiteness sat at the tips of my fingers
\nresolved to leave me near invisible.<\/p>\n
\nLana Bella<\/strong>\u00a0 has a diverse work of poetry and fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with over ninety journals, including a chapbook with Crisis Chronicles Press (2015), Aurorean Poetry, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, QLSR<\/em> (Singapore), elsewhere, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine,<\/em> among others.\u00a0 Lana divides her times between the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a wife of a novelist, and a mom of two frolicsome imps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"