{"id":142456,"date":"2023-09-03T06:41:56","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T10:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=142456"},"modified":"2023-09-03T06:41:56","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T10:41:56","slug":"hour-22-vertebrae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/hour-22-vertebrae\/","title":{"rendered":"Hour 22 &#8211; Vertebrae"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Vertebrae<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The earrings that play demolition<br \/>\nto the tender skin of my neck<br \/>\nhave snake vertebrae as wrecking balls.<br \/>\nThe bone, an aged cream,<br \/>\nis still pointed, lightly sharp.<br \/>\nAcupuncture from a dead thing<br \/>\nhaunts the body differently than metal does.<br \/>\nBut they hang and swing and graze<br \/>\nso close to the first vertebrae of my own spine<br \/>\nthe one with bone shaved away.<br \/>\nI can almost pretend that wearing<br \/>\nthe rigid organs can serve as replacement<br \/>\nfor what I have lost, for all that surgery robbed me of.<br \/>\nPerhaps the fragments of my own body<br \/>\nare out there somewhere, still surviving,<br \/>\nand if so, shouldn\u2019t I survive too?<br \/>\nI am sure I will muster the faith<br \/>\nto believe it is over, someday. But today,<br \/>\nI will let the snake possess this body<br \/>\nif only to move my neck freely once more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vertebrae The earrings that play demolition to the tender skin of my neck have snake vertebrae as wrecking balls. The bone, an aged cream, is still pointed, lightly sharp. Acupuncture from a dead thing haunts the body differently than metal does. But they hang and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3778,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142456","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\/3778"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142463,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142456\/revisions\/142463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}