From the Pacific Ocean the land sprawled eastward
\nwide and flat, crossed by dry stream beds
\nand arroyos carved by twice-a-century rainstorms
\n\u2014 gullies roughened with dust-coated weedy scrub
\nthat sheltered small brown lizards.
\nThe hills heaved from that unpromising plain
\noily green, sage-scented, parched by fickle seasons
\nthat promised relief and delivered none.
\nWe settled there, bewitched by the sky
\nand the thundering shore, by perfumed
\norange groves felled as neighborhoods
\nbullied their way into bouquet branches,
\nall shoulders and boot prints, unforgiving.
\nOnce it snowed, and occasionally the ground
\nwould rupture in displeasure as we clung
\nuselessly to doorframes, the doors bruising
\nour hips in their undulant dance. We wrote
\nletters to pen pals in places we had not yet invaded
\nand saw how astronomers envisioned space travel
\nin the little book we bought at the observatory
\nafter sitting under the dome of the starstruck sky.
\nWe could pretend the everpresent shushing rumble
\nof cars was really the sea and even if the seashells
\nand the pelicans vanished from the water\u2019s edge
\nwe would not blame our hunger, our eagerness
\nto erase the landscape\u2019s flaws and our own,
\nto be made perfect, to be discovered
\nat the luncheon counter of desire.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 j.i. kleinberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the Pacific Ocean the land sprawled eastward wide and flat, crossed by dry stream beds and arroyos carved by twice-a-century rainstorms \u2014 gullies roughened with dust-coated weedy scrub that sheltered small brown lizards. The hills heaved from that unpromising plain oily green, sage-scented, parched…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":721,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1319,145,408],"class_list":["post-21489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-j-i-kleinberg","tag-land","tag-ocean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21489","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\/721"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21519,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21489\/revisions\/21519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}