(Shelter) Guys and Dogs<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He wakes before the sun, dressing in the dark with quiet hands<\/p>\n
Shoes clutched to chest, he nimbly pads down between the rowed, smudge-faced boys;<\/p>\n
the babies, toddlers, skinned-kneed kids and finally, breathlessly, past the oldest boys<\/p>\n
he turns to grab the book on the small table, then quickly to the door<\/p>\n
Lifting up the rust encrusted door latch, squeezing between crack<\/p>\n
Outside, thick fog hugs the boy’s skin, threatening mildew on the book’s frayed pages.<\/p>\n
Tucking the book into his jacket he makes his way,<\/p>\n
kicking through piles of leaves and stepping over crushed cans<\/p>\n
When he reaches the building, the boy walks along the side walls until he reaches the back and climbs the fence<\/p>\n
He quickly moves to the cages and before the scruffy creatures have time to think something wrong<\/p>\n
The boy sits in the dirty courtyard, takes the battered book from his jacket, and reads<\/p>\n
them tales of lands without bars or cages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Shelter) Guys and Dogs He wakes before the sun, dressing in the dark with quiet hands Shoes clutched to chest, he nimbly pads down between the rowed, smudge-faced boys; the babies, toddlers, skinned-kneed kids and finally, breathlessly, past the oldest boys he turns to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":860,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous","category-poetry-prompt-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644","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\/860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20101,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644\/revisions\/20101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}