Years ago, when I was a boy and therefore safer,
\nI would visit Austin on his night-shift at the 7-11<\/p>\n
and watch the zombies shuffle in for microwavable pie
\nor cigarettes. Mostly they just asked for stuff, any change<\/p>\n
we might give them. Later, when Austin became one,
\nhis eyes as hollow as the needle he carried everywhere,<\/p>\n
he called himself Saint Sebastian. You know, that hot
\nnaked guy in all the museums: barely dressed, arms tied<\/p>\n
above his head, his body full of arrows. He writhes
\nin those paintings, every muscle alive and straining.<\/p>\n
But Sebastian didn\u2019t die from the punctures, he was healed
\nand then clubbed to death suddenly after. I think that<\/p>\n
was Austin\u2019s favorite part, being famous for something
\nyou\u2019ve healed from. The last time I saw him<\/p>\n
he was black-out drunk at my birthday party, and ashed
\nin every one of the wine bottles, no matter how full.<\/p>\n
He puked on the front and back porch. I had turned into
\na girl by then and he never liked girls much.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know how to handle him.\u00a0I still miss him though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Years ago, when I was a boy and therefore safer, I would visit Austin on his night-shift at the 7-11 and watch the zombies shuffle in for microwavable pie or cigarettes. Mostly they just asked for stuff, any change we might give them. Later, when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21412","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\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21412"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22334,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21412\/revisions\/22334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}