{"id":622,"date":"2005-03-23T13:45:16","date_gmt":"2005-03-23T20:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/wp2\/uncategorized\/the-blue-blanket-by-sue-ellen-thompson\/"},"modified":"2010-04-03T22:27:54","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T04:27:54","slug":"the-blue-blanket-by-sue-ellen-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/poetry\/the-blue-blanket-by-sue-ellen-thompson\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Blue Blanket” by Sue Ellen Thompson"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Writer’s Almanac – MARCH 21 – 27, 2005<\/a><\/p>\n

“The Blue Blanket” by Sue Ellen Thompson<\/p>\n

Toward the end, my father argued
\nwith my mother over everything: He wanted
\nher to eat again. He wanted her to take<\/p>\n

her medicine. He wanted her
\nto live. He argued with her in their bed
\nat naptime. He was cold, he said,<\/p>\n

tugging at the blanket tangled
\nin my mother’s wasted limbs. From the hall
\noutside their room I listened<\/p>\n

as love, caught and fettered, howled
\nat its captors, gnawing at its own flesh
\nin its frenzy to escape. Then I entered<\/p>\n

without knocking, freed the blanket
\ntrapped between my mother’s knees and shook
\nit out once, high above<\/p>\n

their bodies’ cursive. It floated
\nfor a moment, blue as the Italian sky
\ninto which my father flew his bombs<\/p>\n

in 1943, blue as the hat I’d bought her
\nfor the winter she would never live
\nto see. My father’s agitation eased,<\/p>\n

my mother smiled up at me, her face
\nlucent with gratitude, as the blanket
\nsifted down on them like earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Writer’s Almanac – MARCH 21 – 27, 2005 “The Blue Blanket” by Sue Ellen Thompson Toward the end, my father argued with my mother over everything: He wanted her to eat again. He wanted her to take her medicine. He wanted her to live. He argued with her in their bed at naptime. He … Continue reading “The Blue Blanket” by Sue Ellen Thompson<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}