{"id":326,"date":"2016-05-10T00:32:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T00:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writehanded.org\/poetry\/?p=326"},"modified":"2016-05-10T00:32:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T00:32:23","slug":"keystone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/2016\/05\/10\/keystone\/","title":{"rendered":"Keystone"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote this poem for Roz Palethorpe. It is called\u00a0<\/strong>Keystone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The phlebotomist wanted to know<\/p>\n

what I was going to do with the rest of the day.<\/p>\n

I said I was going to write about pigeons<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not the Wellington ones<\/p>\n

which always made me feel<\/p>\n

starkly urban, or melancholic<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the white-breasted parabolic diver<\/p>\n

heavy-winged half-eater<\/p>\n

equal opportunity parent<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Frugivorous whiplash<\/p>\n

Hemiphaga Novaeseelandiae<\/em><\/p>\n

Kerer\u016b<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The phlebotomist wanted to know why pigeons<\/p>\n

so I told him about you<\/p>\n

and the letter to the editor<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and Katherine,<\/p>\n

who I imagine missed them.<\/p>\n

Not a lot of wood pigeons in Paris.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My girlfriend grew up in a place called Pigeon Valley<\/p>\n

Some M\u0101ori say they represent the presence of feminine beauty<\/p>\n

which I tell her so I can watch her blush<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I tell the phlebotomist that the wood pigeon<\/p>\n

is a keystone species<\/p>\n

because no one else does what they do<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagine that, I say<\/p>\n

as he draws my name on the labelled vials<\/p>\n

and frees my arm<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagine being that significant,<\/p>\n

that special, a vital<\/p>\n

spoke in the system<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yeah, imagine that says the phlebotomist<\/p>\n

as I hop to unsteady feet<\/p>\n

and point myself towards the sunlight<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

in which I will sit<\/p>\n

and Google the bloodline of the Kerer\u016b<\/em><\/p>\n

so I can write this for you.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this poem for Roz Palethorpe. It is called\u00a0Keystone.   The phlebotomist wanted to know what I was going to do with the rest of the day. I said Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}