{"id":3883,"date":"2026-08-13T01:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T08:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=3883"},"modified":"2026-08-13T09:01:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T16:01:32","slug":"shootout-by-zach-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2026\/08\/13\/shootout-by-zach-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cShootout\u201d by Zach Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br>Soon I\u2019ll have no shadow left<br>to throw.<br>As he stirs, I wonder who,<br>what I am tonight.<br>Air gun in hand, he goes <em>pyew pyew<\/em><br>at Mom, mutters<br><em>I\u2019m gonna kill<\/em>, then glares my way\u2014<br><em>Fix your eyes<br>when I\u2019m talking to you, boy.<\/em><br>He snaps<br>at my glasses and we find<br>each other<br>for a moment. His hawkish blues<br>return to glass<br>and I kiss his forehead in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><br><em>Zach Thomas is a writer from Richmond, Virginia. When not teaching college English, he writes poetry sparked from various locations in Appalachia, the American South, and Latin America. These poems tend to revisit grief, loss, and other topics that he realizes are hardly uplifting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Soon I\u2019ll have no shadow leftto throw.As he stirs, I wonder who,what I am tonight.Air gun in hand, he goes pyew pyewat Mom, muttersI\u2019m gonna kill, then glares my way\u2014Fix your eyeswhen I\u2019m talking to you, boy.He snapsat my glasses and we findeach otherfor a moment. His hawkish bluesreturn to glassand I kiss his forehead &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2026\/08\/13\/shootout-by-zach-thomas\/\" class=\"excerpt-link\">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,"_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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-10D","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883","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=3883"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3919,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions\/3919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}