{"id":116484,"date":"2021-12-30T10:59:55","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T16:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=116484"},"modified":"2021-12-30T10:59:56","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T16:59:56","slug":"fever-by-elz-bulington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/fever-by-elz-bulington\/","title":{"rendered":"“Fever” by Elz Bulington"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

a friend stopped me today to say I had recently visited her dreams
i smiled and asked if anyone tagged along
she called them a little boy but
i know my children
won\u2019t be boiled down to their parts<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a sweet knowing
just the same<\/p>\n\n\n\n

i left the office today to hide
a cry in the rain
thinking about little fingers and
even littler finger nails<\/p>\n\n\n\n

is it
bad of me
to wish
these tears are a symptom of
new growths?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

is it
bad of my body
to wish
for those
growths when its chest tightens looking
at the 20.72 charge from walgreens i put on my card today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

is it
bad that I asked
my friend about tagalongs
having had dreams of
little ones
myself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

bad.
bad.
bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

24 is a bad time.
the tensions in my chest release as I read
no–
on the screen of a stick<\/p>\n\n\n\n

spots on our bathroom floor scream
at me
next to
the red of a walgreens receipt
as my partner reads the same
no–
in the freckles on my cheeks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

i hope tonight
will be the night<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of dreamless sleeps<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

a friend stopped me today to say I had recently visited her dreamsi smiled and asked if anyone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123465,"featured_media":116486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[20150,3642,5,4,4782],"class_list":["post-116484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing","tag-elz-bulington","tag-fever","tag-mississippi","tag-oxford","tag-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/poetry.jpg?fit=1000%2C611&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123465"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}