{"id":3440,"date":"2011-11-28T12:59:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T12:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/poetry\/?p=230"},"modified":"2011-11-28T12:59:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T12:59:27","slug":"city-girl-by-russ-woods-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2011\/11\/28\/city-girl-by-russ-woods-2\/","title":{"rendered":"City Girl by Russ Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

CITY-GIRL<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I used to be a city<\/p>\n

but now I\u2019m a girl.<\/p>\n

It took a long time<\/p>\n

for me to change<\/p>\n

from a city to a girl<\/p>\n

and the in-between<\/p>\n

stages were kind of stupid<\/p>\n

but it feels good having<\/p>\n

arms and feet instead of<\/p>\n

buildings and stoplights.<\/p>\n

It feels good being my<\/p>\n

own aldermen and my<\/p>\n

own slumlord.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It feels good being a girl<\/p>\n

and if you look close<\/p>\n

you can tell I was a city<\/p>\n

before. \u00a0Inside me there<\/p>\n

are city things going on.<\/p>\n

Inside me it\u2019s still loud.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inside me there is a woman<\/p>\n

who loves her dog so much<\/p>\n

that she filmed it sleeping<\/p>\n

and projected it thirty feet<\/p>\n

high onto the side of her<\/p>\n

apartment building.<\/p>\n

A dog-eye twitches and a<\/p>\n

whole window seems to move.<\/p>\n

The building is dog-breathing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Last week there was a nightmare<\/p>\n

and the whole sidewalk broke in<\/p>\n

half the long way in front of the building.<\/p>\n

Birds took turns landing on the break<\/p>\n

looking for bugs and they found a few.<\/p>\n

Pedestrians were having trouble<\/p>\n

and so the woman came out<\/p>\n

and helped them push their babies<\/p>\n

and she could feel the babies<\/p>\n

pushing back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

___________________________________________________________
\nRuss Woods lives in Chicago, where he co-edits Red Lightbulbs. \u00a0He has
\nhad or will have poetry in Pank, Trnsfr, and apt. \u00a0His first chapbook,
\nTiny People will be out from NAP in January 2012. \u00a0There is more where
\nthis came from at solarflareshavebeenknowntocauseheartache.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CITY-GIRL   I used to be a city but now I\u2019m a girl. It took a long time for me to change from a city to a girl and the in-between stages were kind of stupid but it feels good having arms and feet instead of buildings and stoplights. It feels good being my own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}