My father preferred a crunchwrap
\ndouble-shelled taco or a Mexican pizza<\/p>\n
to whatever my mother had left for us
\nin the crock pot. On the nights he didn\u2019t eat,<\/p>\n
there was no question of where he\u2019d been.
\nIt was the dietary equivalent of cheating,<\/p>\n
the home-grown vegetables left to simmer
\ninto mush as he gorged himself on tortillas<\/p>\n
white as bleach, but sweet as the empty
\nspace inside a cavity. His body was a plant<\/p>\n
rooted in the wrong soil, withered at
\nthe edges. Death coiled around him<\/p>\n
like a taproot trying to find nutrients
\nin clay, his pale fingers turning black <\/p>\n
as they wrapped around another
\nsoft taco. Even in the nursing home, <\/p>\n
where he was the youngest by at least
\nthirty years, he asked his friends to bring<\/p>\n
chalupas, bean burritos, Baha blasts,
\nnot caring how long he lived, not wondering <\/p>\n
if life could be more than a greasy stop
\non a long stretch of road, an empty wrapper. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father preferred a crunchwrap double-shelled taco or a Mexican pizza to whatever my mother had left for us in the crock pot. On the nights he didn\u2019t eat, there was no question of where he\u2019d been. It was the dietary equivalent of cheating, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49453","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\/1091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49466,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49453\/revisions\/49466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}