There’s a moment when, in the desert south of Vegas,
\nI turn up the music and begin to sing.
\nThe broad, flat vowels lie heavy in my mouth like stones
\nbut these notes dance up into the open sky.
\nShe is handsome, she is pretty.
\nShe is the belle of Belfast city
\nShe is courting’ one, two, three.
\nPlease won’t you tell me, who is she?<\/p>\n
That day, I recall, I sing my way across the desert –
\nbare toes curled up against the dashboard
\ntanned arm braced against the window
\nskin sprinkled with Nevada dust and salt and sweat.
\nMy eyes stay narrowed against the unremitting blue
\nand I am carried near and far from home. <\/p>\n
Early next morning at the desert truck stop
\nI lift my eyes from my first strong coffee of the day
\nto see huge rigs around me smoking like prehistoric beasts;
\nor mighty dragons that have fallen –
\ntheir great chrome wings folded tight and close –
\nout of a darkly-starred and icy pre-dawn sky. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a moment when, in the desert south of Vegas, I turn up the music and begin to sing. The broad, flat vowels lie heavy in my mouth like stones but these notes dance up into the open sky. She is handsome, she is pretty….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37285","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38206,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37285\/revisions\/38206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}