{"id":2982,"date":"2022-01-04T20:06:57","date_gmt":"2022-01-05T04:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=2982"},"modified":"2024-12-17T09:27:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T17:27:31","slug":"manatees-by-elizabeth-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/manatees-by-elizabeth-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cManatees\u201d by Elizabeth Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Willow<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in Willow Springs 79<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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\u201cManatees\u201d by Elizabeth Gold<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Maybe those sailors who mistook them for mermaids<\/p>\n\n\n\n

liked their women with a little meat on them,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

gray green skin patchy with algae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe they liked them almost hairless<\/p>\n\n\n\n

except for a few spiky whiskers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

on a homely-cute tush-shaped face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or maybe they were just men<\/p>\n\n\n\n

who had been away from home a really long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe they had almost forgotten<\/p>\n\n\n\n

what it was like to cup a woman’s breasts<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or smell the oil of her on their fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or maybe they had never known. Some of them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

were so young. Twelve. Thirteen. Cabin boys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think of them in the dank hulks of their caravels,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sketching a woman in air, tweaking her-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hair, eyes, hips-to their liking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or pulling a tooth from the jaw of a whale,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

scrubbing it clean and inking a sweetheart on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or scanning the water for manatees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who hasn’t done a thing like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invented a lover out of air or bone or water?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All those years on my own in New York\u00ad-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sometimes a blind date, couple of drinks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and desultory conversation with a stranger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember walking into a room and seeing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

whoever it was for the first time, hoping for-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know. That something kind would swim up<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to the surface. That I could nudge him into a human shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":25234,"featured_media":563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2982"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37958,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions\/37958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}