Hot, sticky tar, harsh sun blooming gold<\/p>\n
and slicking out sweat from me. My breath<\/p>\n
gusts in and out, my face is bright, a red<\/p>\n
exclamation point over red uniform,<\/p>\n
legs long, burning rubber snaps<\/p>\n
with leaded feet attached on thin, wobble string knees.<\/p>\n
Hair swings, stirring sluggish heat as feet<\/p>\n
pound in tandem with my heart, breath in, out,<\/p>\n
and ahead pounds another pair of feet, another<\/p>\n
set of lungs, and though we run, long-legged,<\/p>\n
sweat-glistening golden girls, I breathe in,<\/p>\n
we breathe out, steps slow but sure<\/p>\n
for hearts, for feet and shaky coltish legs<\/p>\n
and shuddering chests, the red tape<\/p>\n
to mark another end to the long, long race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hot, sticky tar, harsh sun blooming gold and slicking out sweat from me. My breath gusts in and out, my face is bright, a red exclamation point over red uniform, legs long, burning rubber snaps with leaded feet attached on thin, wobble string knees. Hair…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74233","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\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74272,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74233\/revisions\/74272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}