{"id":34321,"date":"2017-08-05T13:37:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T17:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=34321"},"modified":"2017-08-05T13:37:15","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T17:37:15","slug":"poem-5-718-3rd-st-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/poem-5-718-3rd-st-north\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem 5: 718 3rd St. North"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shame lived there.<br \/>\nUneven, crumbly walls painted industrial white,<br \/>\nrusted metal shrieking when we flushed.<br \/>\nI used to glide on second-hand roller skates<br \/>\ndown uncarpeted floor<br \/>\nthat dipped and rolled<br \/>\nthrough dingy rooms.<\/p>\n<p>And the cardboard refrigerator box<br \/>\nI called my castle.<br \/>\nI propped it up against cold walls, cut out a door,<br \/>\nand took countless meals and naps,<br \/>\na short-haired Rapunzel<br \/>\nlanguishing in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>Wrong side of town,<br \/>\nwrong side of the tracks,<br \/>\nwrong side of the<br \/>\nsocioeconomic hierarchy.<br \/>\nI never invited anyone home.<\/p>\n<p>I walked two miles to school every morning<br \/>\nand into the warmth of proud teacherly smiles.<br \/>\nMy bright purple, fake fur coat<br \/>\nlay in mattes against my too-short polyester pants.<br \/>\nAt recess, children trilled and grinned<br \/>\nthrough metal teeth.<br \/>\nI stayed inside as often as teachers let me.<\/p>\n<p>Home, where the absence of my sisters rang,<br \/>\nwhere hostile faces leered through dirty windows,<br \/>\nwhere meals came in boxes from the church,<br \/>\nwhere the occasional gift from Grandma<br \/>\nturned us into tragic princesses.<\/p>\n<p>My sisters came back.<br \/>\nMy toenail fell off.<br \/>\nI bounced like a monkey<br \/>\non the pogo stick my cousin lent me<br \/>\nand ate the Generic Sugar Snaps<br \/>\nthat loomed in echoing cupboards.<\/p>\n<p>Shame lived there,<br \/>\nand for two long years,<br \/>\nso did I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shame lived there. Uneven, crumbly walls painted industrial white, rusted metal shrieking when we flushed. I used to glide on second-hand roller skates down uncarpeted floor that dipped and rolled through dingy rooms. And the cardboard refrigerator box I called my castle. I propped it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":697,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34321","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\/697"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34321"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34377,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34321\/revisions\/34377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}