{"id":2918,"date":"2019-12-13T08:51:21","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T12:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/?p=2918"},"modified":"2019-12-22T18:37:55","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T22:37:55","slug":"a-poem-an-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/2019\/12\/13\/a-poem-an-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"A poem an hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

I whip out a poem every hour on the hour.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am the convenience store of hot poems<\/span><\/span>,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

styrofoam words, a variety of day-glow colors.<\/span><\/p>\n

My feelings are stale salty popcorn, not real<\/span><\/p>\n

butter at all, best to be avoided.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are sex offenders by the slim-jims,<\/span><\/p>\n

the lady behind the counter beats me up.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lonely dog by the glass door ha<\/span><\/span>s <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

mites. You think, cute. But best to stay away.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every poem is coming off the same highway<\/span><\/p>\n

in a different car. Some need gas, some<\/span><\/p>\n

visit dirty restrooms. Some come in<\/span><\/p>\n

to read gun magazines, unaware<\/span><\/p>\n

of the tension in the western corner.<\/span><\/p>\n

She says “I told you I was LATE. You never<\/span><\/span> listen.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He sighs, \u201cI didn\u2019t know what you<\/span><\/p>\n

meant\u201d and grabs a box of good-and-plenty.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sky turns dark. We know to stay inside.<\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone looks up at<\/span><\/span> <\/span> a pile of deadfall leaves, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

brown swirls in a<\/span><\/span>n <\/span><\/span> imperfect tornado, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

creating negative energy by the pumps.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then a poem arrives, too clean, preppy, whispy.  <\/span><\/p>\n

It walks to the register, gently ask<\/span><\/span>s <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

for Benson & Hedges. The other <\/span><\/span>poems<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

roll their eyes, disgusted and disillusioned.<\/span><\/p>\n

I squat with my pants down, overly drun<\/span><\/span>k <\/span><\/span> and <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

peeing by the ATM, waiting fo<\/span><\/span>r copper pennies <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

to fall from<\/span><\/span> heaven, eyeing the <\/span><\/span>poem<\/span> through the <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

large pained window.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I whip out a poem every hour on the hour. I am the convenience store of hot poems, styrofoam words, a variety of day-glow colors. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Sunday Edition, including\n\nA poem an hour by Lori Morgan Flood","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[240,220,177,170,213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-addiction-recovery","category-feminism","category-humanity-of-it-all","category-health","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/img_6014-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1705&ssl=1","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2918"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3231,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918\/revisions\/3231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}