Premonition<\/p>\n
for Grandpa Eddie<\/em><\/p>\n Grandpa\u2019s gut was tingly and hot and it had nothing to do with his wife\u2019s cooking<\/p>\n He knew, the way the ancestors knew, Her voice didn\u2019t sound right that last time Following her with his eyes<\/p>\n She was beautiful<\/p>\n Pie His ears burned, panic slithered up his spine He could feel it He paced the floor in front of the window He always had the car serviced before a trip The vise around his heart kept tightening His heart nearly stopped beating.<\/p>\n He wrote a letter instead, to free his heart from all he was feeling. The letter was returned, eventually<\/p>\n After the troopers came to the back door. When the letter came back, stamped \u2018undeliverable\u2019, He was never the same<\/p>\n His heart was shattered Premonition for Grandpa Eddie Grandpa\u2019s gut was tingly and hot and it had nothing to do with his wife\u2019s cooking He knew, the way the ancestors knew, When the slave traders were on the coast, moving in silence, That his oldest daughter was in danger…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25338","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29423,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25338\/revisions\/29423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen the slave traders were on the coast, moving in silence,
\nThat his oldest daughter was in danger<\/p>\n
\nShe worried about a
\nStrange Man hanging around the bus station where she worked<\/p>\n
\nFirst of her name, ne\u00e9 Rose Etta
\nAfter her grandmother, of the House Westbrook<\/p>\n
\nSomething
\nWas
\nWrong<\/p>\n
\nHis bones never lied<\/p>\n
\nOther babies on the couch, face lit by candlelight due to the raging storm
\nThe ten year old watched him with worried eyes and wrinkled brow<\/p>\n
\nShe was oiled and full of gas, ready to gobble the highway between
\nHolyoke and Albany
\nAs soon as the golfball-sized hail stopped
\nPummeling every in its path<\/p>\n
\nThe more he thought of the first of his seven girls
\nThe more he heard her voice, yelling for him down a long corridor
\nDaddy! Daddy!<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIn his sharecropper\u2019s hand, he put his soul on that paper
\nAll his concerns, his fatherly promises<\/p>\n
\nAfter the screams.
\nAfter the burial of his murdered girl, beloved Pie<\/p>\n
\nThe finality of it settled in the grooves around his face
\nReplacing the laugh lines
\nWrinkled by hot sun and hot grief<\/p>\n
\nNot like shards of glass but
\nGround into a diamond-dust powder
\nRazor sharp, shimmery
\nDangerous<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"