{"id":391,"date":"2018-09-22T01:24:36","date_gmt":"2018-09-22T01:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=391"},"modified":"2018-08-12T17:30:05","modified_gmt":"2018-08-12T17:30:05","slug":"391","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/09\/22\/391\/","title":{"rendered":"Norman, OK by Eric Pierzchala"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Eric is a Humanities teacher (his favorite class to teach is Literature in Film), a former professional baseball player, and he&#8217;s taught chess to children for over a decade. Eric holds an MFA in poetry from Murray State University, and his poems have appeared, or will be appearing, in such publications as: Plain Spoke, The Stray Branch, Atlantic Pacific Press, Ceremony, The 2018 Surrealist\/Outsider Anthologie, and The International Anthology on Paradoxism.<\/em><\/h6>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Norman, OK<\/p>\n<p>All the ingredients are there for a fine Midwestern<br \/>\nstory. The old horse is by the dirt road, large head<\/p>\n<p>chewing sideways the hay, muzzle hanging out over<br \/>\nthe gray split-rail fence, tasting hay, sniffing air.<\/p>\n<p>And at the boy passing, he does not neigh\u2014the boy,<br \/>\nnot a boy anymore, but home. The un-locked back<\/p>\n<p>screen door creaks as usual, he walks in. After a hug<br \/>\nfrom his mother, a shared smile while she holds his shoulders,<\/p>\n<p>no words, he sits down at the kitchen table with his father, his<br \/>\nmother, the silk blue flower arrangement in the pale white vase,<\/p>\n<p>which hasn\u2019t changed in years, between them. His dad<br \/>\nsays he\u2019s happy to see him. Coffee is brewing on<\/p>\n<p>the stove\u2014begins to percolate. The boy picks at the edge<br \/>\nof the placement in front of him\u2014just as he used to. His<\/p>\n<p>mother says, \u201cdon\u2019t pick\u201d, his father says<br \/>\nnothing, but he takes his thumbnail; digs<\/p>\n<p>the nail in deep between hard plastic and soft foam,<br \/>\nand says, while not looking at them but instead<\/p>\n<p>at the placemat, which has a teeny tilted windmill<br \/>\npictured on it, \u201cI\u2019m seeing someone. It\u2019s not a he.\u201d<br \/>\nCoffee is ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric is a Humanities teacher (his favorite class to teach is Literature in Film), a former professional baseball player, and he&#8217;s taught chess to children for over a decade. Eric holds an MFA in poetry from Murray State University, and his poems have appeared, or will be appearing, in such publications as: Plain Spoke, The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/09\/22\/391\/\" 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,"_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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sa867U-391","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","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=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}