Virtuoso<\/p>\n
I found you in a gray yard, politely brimming,
\npolicing the clearings in a stranger’s voice.
\nListening to a radio you wanted to intercept
\nthe meaning of what was heard, the anthill-like
\nspaces, deep, filled by chatter of announcers.
\nYou saw the sound fade, its colors hung.
\nA hidden doorway threw itself open.
\nNo one entered. Only you saw this escape hatch
\nfrom surveillance, a thing which to you is common
\nbut to most an invisible intruder. Wide.
\nYou consider your mistakes, line them out
\nas pellets rifled from a slingshot hidden in a
\nchastity chamber at a church hostel. Dust harangued
\nyou, chanting your failures with a priestly poll but
\nsaving its tricks for those illusions you can not
\ncreate by yourself. Inside. Nickels and stones
\ndeserted you but dust settled on the sod-like grin
\nyou shared with a fellow traveler, a patient
\non the bus who knew your name without asking,
\nwho sat in the ugly gloaming, arms crossed,
\ndelivering litanies of a trauma long rested but
\nendlessly reflected in its own suffering.
\nNothing is left of your decisions. Empty chairs and
\ngravel sewage blink from saying yes to your
\nflashes of freedom. You bury the results in a
\ncomic book, in full color Sunday Best, the
\ntempest burping beneath joyless influences of
\nunsettled dust from a stranger’s forgotten youth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Virtuoso I found you in a gray yard, politely brimming, policing the clearings in a stranger’s voice. Listening to a radio you wanted to intercept the meaning of what was heard, the anthill-like spaces, deep, filled by chatter of announcers. You saw the sound fade, its colors hung. A hidden doorway threw itself open. No […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_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":"","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":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-7gN","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27950,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27949\/revisions\/27950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}