{"id":49,"date":"2009-01-04T15:37:47","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T19:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/?p=49"},"modified":"2009-01-04T16:30:20","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T20:30:20","slug":"a-deck-of-pornographic-playing-cards-ted-kooser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"A Deck of Pornographic Playing Cards &#8211; Ted Kooser"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[audio:playingcards.mp3] (2:00)<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">read by Ted Kooser.  audio from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blueflowerarts.com\/index.html\" target=\"blank\">Blue Flower Arts<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We were ten or eleven, my friend and I,<br \/>\nwhen we found them up under a bridge,<br \/>\non top of a beam where pigeons were resting.<br \/>\nSomeone had carefully hidden them there.<br \/>\n<!--more-->On each was a black-and-white photo,<br \/>\nno two cards alike. We grew quiet and older,<br \/>\nyoung men on our haunches, staring at<br \/>\nwhat we feared might be the future.<br \/>\nThe pigeons flapped back to their roosts,<br \/>\nrustling and cooing. The river gurgled<br \/>\nas it slipped from the bridge&#8217;s cool shadow.<br \/>\nThere were women with big muzzled dogs,<br \/>\nwomen with bottles and broom handles.<br \/>\nStallions stood over the bodies of others.<br \/>\nThe women smiled and licked their lips<br \/>\nwith tongues like thorns. We grew old.<br \/>\nWe were two old men with stiff legs<br \/>\nand sad hearts. We had wanted to laugh<br \/>\nbut we couldn&#8217;t. We had thought we were boys,<br \/>\ncome there to throw stones at the pigeons,<br \/>\nbut we were already dying inside. <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"1\"><em>from Weather Central (1994)<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[audio:playingcards.mp3] (2:00) read by Ted Kooser. audio from Blue Flower Arts. We were ten or eleven, my friend and I, when we found them up under a bridge, on top of a beam where pigeons were resting. Someone had carefully hidden them there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-pigeons-were-resting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}