{"id":1598,"date":"2018-01-01T08:33:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T15:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1598"},"modified":"2017-12-31T12:54:28","modified_gmt":"2017-12-31T19:54:28","slug":"lock-shock-and-barrel-by-janna-layton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1598","title":{"rendered":"Lock, Shock, and Barrel by Janna Layton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

When we were kids,
\nno one wanted to be the zombie boy
\nfrom The Nightmare Before Christmas,
\nthe fat kid flanked by zombie parents
\nand guided through each day.
\nEven when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not attached to Mom
\nby a leash or held on Dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shoulders,
\nyou know he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never been by himself
\nto the park, or what passes for a park
\nin that Gothic Podunk.<\/p>\n

No, everyone wanted to be the three feral kids,
\nthe Huck Finn Lost Boy kids,
\nwolf pup pack,
\nstylish street gang of three:
\ndevil kid, witch kid, dead kid.
\nBonds stronger than summer camp lanyards.
\nRunning wherever by themselves with each other.
\nAdventures beyond gray hills, candy for dinner,
\nnever flinching at the Louise Bourgeois spiders.<\/p>\n

We wanted to be kids like that,
\nmouths and feet free.
\nParents are missing in stories for a reason.<\/p>\n

But stories are stories,
\nand in stories you know
\nJim the freedman or James the pirate or Jack the skeleton
\nis ready to step in. And look:
\nhere comes the car driven by adults,
\nthe three kids riding small-town-cool on top,
\ntheir tricks wordlessly forgiven
\nas they return to the safety of the square.<\/p>\n

As children we knew we were not in a story,
\nand that refusing the leash meant refusing the shoulders.
\nThat \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lost\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would mean something different to us,
\nsomething with sidewalks and broken glass
\nand stale smells we did not recognize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we were kids, no one wanted to be the zombie boy from The Nightmare Before Christmas, the fat kid flanked by zombie parents and guided through each day. Even when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not attached to Mom by a leash or held on Dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shoulders, you know he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never been by himself to the park, or […]<\/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-1598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598","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=1598"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1598\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}