{"id":3597,"date":"2013-02-19T02:48:06","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T02:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/?p=3597"},"modified":"2013-02-19T02:48:06","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T02:48:06","slug":"3597","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2013\/02\/19\/3597\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Poems by Eric Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Burnside Park<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Providence, Rhode Island <\/em><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nEvery Saturday morning<br \/>\nat the park near my house<br \/>\nswollen women arrive and<br \/>\nexplode all over the grass.<br \/>\nArmies of tiny bodies crawl<br \/>\nfrom the clutter and scream<br \/>\nlike boiling lobsters \u2013 while<br \/>\nfathers wait with fresh supplies,<br \/>\ngrandparents carve new<br \/>\nnames into a family tree,<br \/>\nand teenagers hang themselves<br \/>\nfrom swing sets, with dog leashes<br \/>\nall are unaware of the black<br \/>\nclouds fleeing their mouths<br \/>\nas the overcrowded city<br \/>\nbuilt on loneliness<br \/>\ncatches fire again.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n______________________<br \/>\n<strong>Cheap Rent<\/strong><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nOutside, hookers with poke and stick tattoos, whose clothes are dirty and tight slip in and out of cars in the dark.  Two teenagers shove each other on the corner. A man with a shopping cart full of plastic dolls shouts at a fire hydrant, barks at the feral dogs.  The pile of trash becomes a monument and the chalk outlines get up and walk away.  We\u2019re startled each time a kid throws a rock through anything made of glass. We listen with elephant ears to the strange languages falling from windows while the neighbor on the left side beats up his girlfriend and the one on the right beats himself off.  Scared as children, we watch from the crack between shade and sill.  We look to the overflowing sink, to the wise toilet that howls.  We look to each other.  How can we swallow this moonlight?  How can we trade our skin for streets signs?  How can we haunt these streets with those?<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n____________________<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<strong>Without Her<\/strong><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nI was a heap<br \/>\nof sloppy organs<br \/>\nleft behind<br \/>\non a delivery room floor.<br \/>\nI was to be hosed<br \/>\ndown a drain.<br \/>\nForgotten. But soon a body<br \/>\nwould be pieced together<br \/>\nfrom the skin and bones of men<br \/>\nmy new lover dreamt up and killed.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n_________________________<br \/>\n<strong>Eric Paul<\/strong> is a writer and musician from Providence, Rhode Island.  He is the lyricist and vocalist for various experimental musical acts including: <em>Arab On Radar, Chinese Stars,<\/em> and <em>Doomsday Student.<\/em> Eric has released over ten albums and has been touring worldwide for over fifteen years. He is currently earning his M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Burnside Park Providence, Rhode Island &nbsp; &nbsp; Every Saturday morning at the park near my house swollen women arrive and explode all over the grass. Armies of tiny bodies crawl from the clutter and scream like boiling lobsters \u2013 while fathers wait with fresh supplies, grandparents carve new names into a family tree, and teenagers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597","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=3597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}