{"id":113740,"date":"2022-06-25T17:48:33","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T21:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/?p=113740"},"modified":"2022-06-28T11:53:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T15:53:58","slug":"a-bitter-sweet-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/a-bitter-sweet-afternoon\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bitter-sweet Afternoon (Hour 9)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Home from school and the sweltering heat of day<\/p>\n

Greeted mom and she parroted, ‘Good afternoon, darling’<\/p>\n

The last word slapped my face<\/p>\n

Mom was no romantic<\/p>\n

And a few steps into the house,<\/p>\n

dad sat stolid, and stolidly greeted me.<\/p>\n

An afternoon to remember<\/p>\n

A bitterleaf soup with semovita, and Nico Mbarga belting Sweet<\/em> Mother<\/em> from ancient speakers<\/p>\n

Something was amiss. Darling? And mom was no romantic.<\/p>\n

Straight-laced Anglican woman with no frills about knocking a child back into shape.<\/p>\n

Darling?<\/p>\n

Siesta done, father called me by that name which portended danger.<\/p>\n

Name in full, meaning, your cup is full.<\/p>\n

The drawer opened and my sinwas handed to me in a white sheet of paper<\/p>\n

Love letter to a girl, the object of my infantile desire, signed and sealed with the damning word, ‘Darling’!<\/p>\n

The ground did not swallow me.<\/p>\n

I faced my fate with fear and trembling, alone and then came the verdict;<\/p>\n

“We shall see!” words worse than a hundred strokes of the cane.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Home from school and the sweltering heat of day Greeted mom and she parroted, ‘Good afternoon, darling’ The last word slapped my face Mom was no romantic And a few steps into the house, dad sat stolid, and stolidly greeted me. An afternoon to remember…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4014,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4014"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113740"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124323,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113740\/revisions\/124323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}