Your town along the Clark Fork River<\/p>\n
overflows with homeless tents,<\/p>\n
cluttering the bucolic landscape<\/p>\n
at a similar ratio to Los Angeles<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
or San Francisco: cardboard scraps,<\/p>\n
ripped tarpaulins, discarded REI tents<\/p>\n
resuscitated from dumpsters<\/p>\n
and repurposed into homes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I remember your extended<\/p>\n
vagabond stint in 1980s Madison\u2014<\/p>\n
sleeping on heated parking ramps<\/p>\n
in the depths of a Wisconsin winter,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
disguising your tattered backpack<\/p>\n
as a tree stump, then stashing it<\/p>\n
in the woods behind the Memorial Union,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
while students drank two-dollar pitchers of Point<\/p>\n
and complained about their classes.<\/p>\n
Now, you and your embittered wife<\/p>\n
live in a spacious house downtown.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You probably complain about the mess<\/p>\n
as you drive your minivans to Safeway,<\/p>\n
but I wouldn\u2019t know about it,<\/p>\n
since you no longer speak to me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was good enough when you had nothing,<\/p>\n
but comfort renders me useless.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I hope I creep into your dreams<\/p>\n
with offers of food, sex, and clothing,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
and you\u2019re forced to remember<\/p>\n
your days of poverty, but<\/p>\n
I am sure your sleep is empty,<\/p>\n
and you have forgotten everything.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your town along the Clark Fork River overflows with homeless tents, cluttering the bucolic landscape at a similar ratio to Los Angeles or San Francisco: cardboard scraps, ripped tarpaulins, discarded REI tents resuscitated from dumpsters and repurposed into homes. I remember your extended…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4286,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129441","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\/4286"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129792,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129441\/revisions\/129792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}