{"id":352,"date":"1997-09-22T14:40:53","date_gmt":"1997-09-22T22:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/?p=352"},"modified":"2010-03-09T18:42:57","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T02:42:57","slug":"fire-escape-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/fire-escape-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"fire escape poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bushman on the savanna<br \/>\nshaking a rock at the sky<br \/>\nWords like desperate fingers, dying<br \/>\nfumble towards him<br \/>\nIn the midst of such horror:<br \/>\n&#8220;God help me, it tickles!&#8221;<br \/>\nUnformed, embryo,<br \/>\na naive intake of breath<br \/>\npreceding history<\/p>\n<p>There is a cat face peering<br \/>\nthrough ferns in that window<br \/>\ndistant window seen from<br \/>\nsomeone else&#8217;s fire escape<br \/>\ntiny ears listening<br \/>\nfor food-like noises<br \/>\nQuiet patient biology<br \/>\nCat.<\/p>\n<p>We are waiting on fire escapes<br \/>\nbreathing air that<br \/>\nis fresher at least<br \/>\nthan the closed conditioning<br \/>\nof weekend offices.<br \/>\nIt is Manhattan<br \/>\nand we are quietly afraid,<br \/>\nbecause our complacency<br \/>\nhas failed to produce<br \/>\neven monsters.<\/p>\n<p>Or, endless roaring stations<br \/>\n<em>homo transiens<\/em><br \/>\nwaiting to move again,<br \/>\nwaiting to stop moving<br \/>\nLost in private digestion<br \/>\nof culture&#8217;s thin milk<br \/>\nbitter<br \/>\nwith the taint<br \/>\nof newspaper ink.<br \/>\nBlack spots dot the platforms<br \/>\ngum once chewed<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ladies and Gentlemen,<br \/>\nI apologize for the interruption.<br \/>\nI am in complete agony.<br \/>\nThere is little you can do to help.<br \/>\nThank you for your time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He is a black man<br \/>\nin a stained business suit<br \/>\nsinging off key<br \/>\nand pierced by muttered commentary<br \/>\nSpinning in his private world<br \/>\nlike a dizzy spider.<br \/>\nI can feel the date on<br \/>\nevery coin in my pocket<br \/>\nas I leave the train.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bushman on the savanna \/ shaking a rock at the sky<br \/>\nWords like desperate fingers, dying \/ fumble towards him &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[235,223,204,68,238,84,234],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-abrupt","tag-cat","tag-city","tag-guilt","tag-history","tag-language","tag-new-york","tag-subway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abrupt.org\/abruptlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}