{"id":444,"date":"2018-04-15T17:08:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-15T17:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=444"},"modified":"2018-04-15T17:09:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-15T17:09:48","slug":"poem-of-the-month-empty-chair-by-terry-wolverton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=444","title":{"rendered":"Poem of the Month: Empty Chair by Terry Wolverton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

for those who\u2019ve walked on, <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

for those left behind<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thin brown jacket hangs from slant rail
\n<\/span>in the garage, brings your absence
\n<\/span>into my bones.\u00a0 <\/span>They ache; winter
\n<\/span>looms, bleaching color from the days.<\/span><\/p>\n

We learn stories about you we
\n<\/span>never knew, or heard once, forgot:
\n<\/span>Days on the beach in Mexico;
\n<\/span>how you\u2019d quick, stop the car <\/i>to paint<\/span><\/p>\n

a desert sunrise; that you came
\n<\/span>to this country on a boat; left
\n<\/span>behind your language, your dreams
\n<\/span>how you wept the day your son died.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or we listen once more to your
\n<\/span>nerve-lit music, sing the lyrics
\n<\/span>by heart.\u00a0 <\/span>We still recall the first
\n<\/span>time those blue words broke us, healed us.<\/span><\/p>\n

A piece of us follows you up
\n<\/span>that long road; a piece stays behind.
\n<\/span>The empty chair, so much larger
\n<\/span>now, seen with our new eyes, rinsed clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Terry Wolverton is author of eleven books of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, most recently Ruin Porn.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>She is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing studio in Los Angeles, and Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yvonne M. Estrada is a Los Angeles-based poet and photographer.\u00a0 <\/span>She is the author of My Name on Top of Yours<\/i>, a crown of sonnets with original photographs.\u00a0 <\/span>Her work has recently appeared in Talking Writing, Lit for Life, <\/i>and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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

    for those who\u2019ve walked on, for those left behind     Thin brown jacket hangs from slant rail […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-noellesickelswp","post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-allposts","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}