My favorite animals are the black ones:
\nSleek.
\nLight gleams off muscles and rolls
\nlike someone smeared their
\nprecious hides with Vaseline.
\nFur so shiny we can see into the
\nsmarmy depths of our own prejudices.
\nAn honest, onyx mirror,
\ncurving like the darkest sky
\nfrom which the moon bites
\ncrescent chunks.<\/p>\n
The black ones know us,
\nsee our rejection of our own
\ndark spots.
\nStill, they rub against us,
\nleaving tinsel-dark threads
\nthat stitch together our
\nphilosophical treastises and
\nethnocentrism.<\/p>\n
When the sooty skies singe the heavens
\nand the stars have closed their winking eyes,
\nthey watch us,
\nour shadows on lightless nights.
\nThey see what we do,
\nsmell what we know.
\nAnd when the sun finally rises,
\nthey remain there, at our feet,
\nblack pupils promising
\nforgiveness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My favorite animals are the black ones: Sleek. Light gleams off muscles and rolls like someone smeared their precious hides with Vaseline. Fur so shiny we can see into the smarmy depths of our own prejudices. An honest, onyx mirror, curving like the darkest sky…<\/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-37223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37223","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=37223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37238,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37223\/revisions\/37238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}