{"id":394,"date":"2012-01-01T16:51:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T16:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/requitedarchive.wordpress.com\/?p=394"},"modified":"2021-08-04T19:20:45","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T19:20:45","slug":"expanding-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/2012\/01\/01\/expanding-witness\/","title":{"rendered":"Expanding Witness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He burns the skin off their legs<br \/>\nto make them walk, make them alive, their deprived<BR><br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0metatarsals\u2014skeletal as a map, its barbed lines.<BR><br \/>\nWitness to removal\u2014hands to fan the flame,<br \/>\nthe smell of rotten veins, their exposure to lighter fluid<BR><br \/>\nperceptions\u2014the charred carcasses<br \/>\npuddle the margins of gravel. He grips<BR><br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0one hand on hock, fetlock resting on knee.<BR><br \/>\nRepeating landscape, each skeleton forms a field.<br \/>\nThere is so much life in bones\u2014his motive and motion to<BR><br \/>\nburn the sickness\u2014how he unravels the skein of stillness,<br \/>\nanimating the dead, their count rising as integer tinder. <BR><br \/>\nLegs expand and then contract with pressure.<br \/>\nFor days he returns to delete the bones, their traces, <BR><br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0how he buries life in his stomach, marrow and all.<BR><BR><br \/>\n<BR><BR><BR><br \/>\nAfter living in Barrow (AK), New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, <strong>Bret Shepard<\/strong> is currently a McPhee Fellow in the PhD Program at the University of Nebraska, where he also teaches writing. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in <em>American Letters and Commentary, Copper Nickel, DMQ Review, Hobble Creek Review, Matter, Portland Review<\/em>, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He burns the skin off their legs to make them walk, make them alive, their deprived \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0metatarsals\u2014skeletal as a map, its barbed lines. Witness to removal\u2014hands to fan the flame, the smell of rotten veins, their exposure to lighter fluid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9926],"tags":[22020],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}