Perfumers live to bottle summer in a ceaseless, amber-colored illusion –
\nexotic white flowers, beach waves, crisp linens –
\nand to reinforce the olfactory opulence that can be sampled, then discarded
\nonce the tiny vessel’s nozzle expires (leaving that one tantalizing, unavailable
\nsquirt) with names meant to evoke all the sets of every single film or show
\nabout people who are rich or who are likewise unencumbered by what summer really smells like –
\nthe food trash of the restaurant next door, spoiling and sweltering under the unbroken boxes;
\nthe exhaust of a bus barely stopped for its next set of the season’s prisoners to board;
\nthe overly ripe homeless denizen with his ubiquitous shopping cart and glittering eyes;
\nthe stale glass of red wine in the kitchen sink every morning –
\nand, yet, I give into the escapism, even as I monitor the cost of summer’s twin terrors,
\nOzone alerts and a blazing sun that incinerates us all equally.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perfumers live to bottle summer in a ceaseless, amber-colored illusion – exotic white flowers, beach waves, crisp linens – and to reinforce the olfactory opulence that can be sampled, then discarded once the tiny vessel’s nozzle expires (leaving that one tantalizing, unavailable squirt) with names…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129888","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129888"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135669,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129888\/revisions\/135669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}