{"id":1408,"date":"2019-08-17T01:57:25","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T01:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2019-08-16T20:42:38","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T20:42:38","slug":"noughts-and-crosses-by-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/08\/17\/noughts-and-crosses-by-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad\/","title":{"rendered":"Noughts and Crosses by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney based artist, poet, and improv pianist. She has a Masters degree in English and has worked in both media and education. Oormila is a member of the North Shore Poetry Project and performs her work regularly at venues in Sydney. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Noughts and Crosses<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freshly forty. Reinventing.
\nThe world of academia
\nnow a cobwebbed memory
\nten years dead,
\nI don my new avatar-
\nsmall time teacher,
\nsometime comedienne,
\nchatty storyteller,
\nat a suburban studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I teach six year olds to peel
\nthe whorled hearts of flowers,
\nChannel the eye of a Georgia O’keeffe,
\nPlot cornfields and crows and lily ponds.
\nSkim the skies in Chagall flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They hang on the lilt of my every word,
\nadulation in their eyes,
\nthe front of my apron a Pollock dribble-
\nsmears and spatters of
\nhands and hugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s only at the end of class
\nwhen I turn cleaner,
\nSoaping and scrubbing
\nstains off wood,
\nThat the dolour creeps in,
\nand my life appears to me
\na mesh of noughts and crosses,
\nmore chequered, more scribbled
\nthan the plastic painting mats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when some of the parents
\nlook through me,
\nAs their children wave goodbye,
\nIt gurgles rancid, to the surface.
\nthin and vaporous
\nas the cleaning fluid I spritz.
\nI resist the urge to proclaim
\nin my dark, contralto voice,
\nSomething as idiotic,
\nand ironic,
\n as, \u201c I was the valedictorian
\nof my graduating class, you know!\u201d
\nAs though that would earn me :
\nEye contact,
\nWorthiness,
\nRedemption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney based artist, poet, and improv pianist. She has a Masters degree in English and has worked in both media and education. Oormila is a member of the North Shore Poetry Project and performs her work regularly at venues in Sydney. Noughts and Crosses Freshly forty. Reinventing. The world of … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-mI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1410,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}