{"id":1232,"date":"2016-10-17T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2016-10-16T18:02:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T01:02:08","slug":"why-my-father-wont-be-at-my-wedding-by-lisa-bradley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1232","title":{"rendered":"Why My Father Won&#8217;t Be at My Wedding, by Lisa Bradley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1235\" src=\"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/640px-Antonio_Mu\u00c3\u00b1iz_-_The_Creator_and_Protector_of_Hearts.jpg\" alt=\"640px-antonio_muniz_-_the_creator_and_protector_of_hearts\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A jovial drunk, my father\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<br \/>\nHis verbosity<br \/>\nexpanded diametrically<br \/>\nto his sobriety\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<br \/>\nnot so unusual in his early cups<br \/>\nfrom other alcoholics I have known:<br \/>\ncareful elocution and<br \/>\nhigh-brow multisyllabics to distract the audience<br \/>\n(he thought)<br \/>\nfrom that slow slip-slide into inebriation.<br \/>\nBut as each occasion wore on,<br \/>\nthe liquor let trip from his tongue<br \/>\nevery gimcrack archaism hoarded by lexophiles,<br \/>\nso much so that I sometimes wondered<br \/>\nif he was speaking English or<br \/>\nsome long-lost language known only<br \/>\nto cabalists of peculiar arts.<br \/>\nOn and on his articulation unraveled<br \/>\nfor also-tipsy companions until I\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<br \/>\ncornered with a sippy cup of warm cider<br \/>\nthat tasted suspiciously of cough syrup\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<br \/>\ndoubted his elaborate syntax<br \/>\ncorresponded to any human dialect,<br \/>\nliving or dead.<br \/>\nYet still he soliloquized,<br \/>\ncadences and inflections consistent<br \/>\nas they were mysterious,<br \/>\nas if he recited a labyrinthine spell<br \/>\nno less enchanting for being impenetrable.<br \/>\nAnd never did he wax so loquacious<br \/>\nas the night of my sixteenth birthday,<br \/>\nwhen he drank so profoundly and orated<br \/>\nwith such unintelligible conviction that,<br \/>\nholding court before the fireplace,<br \/>\nfirst his loafered feet then all the way up<br \/>\nto his gesticulating cigarette,<br \/>\nmy father transformed to<br \/>\none long helix of opaque smoke<br \/>\nthat slipped up the chimney<br \/>\nand into the star-flecked night.<br \/>\nThose who ran outside insist<br \/>\nhe dissipated amidst the Milky Way<br \/>\nbut that explanation is neither officially<br \/>\nnor socially acceptable\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<br \/>\nno bureaucratically endorsed acronym exists,<br \/>\nfor child abandonment via sublimation.<br \/>\nThus I simply say,<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My father and I are estranged.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<h6>art by\u00c2\u00a0By Humberto Antonio Muniz &#8211; Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=22851878<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; A jovial drunk, my father\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 His verbosity expanded diametrically to his sobriety\u00e2\u20ac\u201d not so unusual in his early cups from other alcoholics I have known: careful elocution and high-brow multisyllabics to distract the audience (he thought) from that slow slip-slide into inebriation. But as each occasion wore on, the liquor let trip from his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1236,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions\/1236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}