{"id":5595,"date":"2024-02-07T03:59:02","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T08:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/?p=5595"},"modified":"2024-02-07T04:00:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T09:00:10","slug":"nineteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/poetry\/nineteen\/","title":{"rendered":"Nineteen"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mceTemp\"><\/div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5596\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5596\" style=\"width: 374px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-5596\" src=\"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2024\/02\/Mother-and-Daughter-Poetry-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"374\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2024\/02\/Mother-and-Daughter-Poetry-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2024\/02\/Mother-and-Daughter-Poetry-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2024\/02\/Mother-and-Daughter-Poetry-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2024\/02\/Mother-and-Daughter-Poetry.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 374px) 100vw, 374px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5596\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Art by Lauren Russler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\">Reality is unbending over my eyelids.<br \/>\nThe tides tattoo my ankles<br \/>\nand I close my eyes on the highway<br \/>\nso they can take the wheel<br \/>\nfrom the tremors of my grasp<br \/>\nand carry me home.<br \/>\nMy recklessness is a child I hold by the hand<br \/>\nand lead through the thinning aisles<br \/>\nof the grocery store.<br \/>\nIn the parking lot, I brush her greasy hair<br \/>\nand tell her fables of martyrs<br \/>\nand witches and wives.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I am old enough for them to burn me for a crowd.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Would they believe the contorted truth of me<br \/>\nif I stood before the court,<br \/>\nthe solar flare across my sweatshirt<br \/>\nthrobbing like a heart?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I have walked the circumference of two moons<br \/>\nin thousands of shoes \u2014<br \/>\nplatformed, flat and wide, studded with silver.<br \/>\nThey are now in the donate bin<br \/>\na closed-down thrift store<br \/>\non the South Shore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I could be the hyacinth girl, I tell myself, wet with rain.<br \/>\nI could be an iron dancer on a rusted weather vane.<br \/>\nNo, name me Marigold<br \/>\nfor the yellow-orange bloom<br \/>\nof my grandfather\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Oh, sweet nineteen \u2014 let me go, let me go.<br \/>\nLet me be old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Let me be an old woman already, one who coats<br \/>\nher white in teal and pink, in a little house<br \/>\non a limestone cliff, the bluster combing her out,<br \/>\nspreading her wide, dashing her<br \/>\nalong the whitecaps like hopscotch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Her cottage leaning over the cliff<br \/>\non Mermaid Lane, oyster shuckings<br \/>\nlittering the yard<br \/>\nlike spent shell casings, stout towers<br \/>\nof rounded rocks lining the dirt path, a rusty bike<br \/>\nlaced with greens propped against a walnut tree.<br \/>\nCall me Marigold in this place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reality is unbending over my eyelids. The tides tattoo my ankles and I close my eyes on the highway so they can take the wheel from the tremors of my grasp and carry me home. My recklessness is a child I hold by the hand and lead through the thinning aisles of the grocery store. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":5596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[558],"class_list":["post-5595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poetry","tag-coming-of-age","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}