{"id":36139,"date":"2024-04-30T13:03:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T20:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36139"},"modified":"2025-02-07T12:23:56","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T20:23:56","slug":"two-poems-by-carol-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/two-poems-by-carol-potter\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems by Carol Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-99b67295\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-wrapper gb-grid-wrapper-dd3264a0\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-e0d908e0\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-e0d908e0\">\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"430\" height=\"648\" src=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/04\/93WSOnline.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-35509\" style=\"width:277px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/04\/93WSOnline.jpg 430w, https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/04\/93WSOnline-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 430px) 100vw, 430px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"gb-headline gb-headline-d8fd1a22 gb-headline-text\"><strong>Found in&nbsp;<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/willow-springs-93\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/willow-springs-93\/\"><strong>Willow Springs&nbsp;93<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"gb-headline gb-headline-99773099 gb-headline-text\"><strong>Back to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/carol-potter\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"36048\">Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-7e6c16e8\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-7e6c16e8\">\n\n<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-36139-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/05\/glass-eggs.-Potter-1.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/05\/glass-eggs.-Potter-1.mp3\">https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/05\/glass-eggs.-Potter-1.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Glass Eggs, or They Like to Eat Same as You<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Some farmers put glass eggs in their nesting boxes. <br>Snakes slide in, swallow those eggs. Die<br>when the glass inside them breaks.<br>You can understand it from the hen&#8217;s point of view,<br>from the farmer&#8217;s point of view. I was the farmer, the daughter of,  <br>and my job was collecting the eggs, washing them, sorting them.<br>I never found a snake in a nesting box. Sometimes long black <br>polished ropes of them lay out in front of the hen-house.<br>Sunning themselves. Other places they put ping pong balls<br>in the hens&#8217; nests. Same principle. Swallow, then choke.<br>I&#8217;d never hear of that before today, but it&#8217;s something<br>Michael Ondaatje witnessed as a child. That <br>and the family shooting the snakes when they came into the house.<br>Cobra on a desk. In a chair. In the corner of the kitchen.<br>Someone might be loading a gun. Sometimes the action freezes. <br>Sometimes I wish for a glass egg I could make what&#8217;s eating me eat. <br>How useful when the thing you can&#8217;t stand takes the form of a fat snake.<br>When it&#8217;s there on the desk whisking its head back and forth when it sees you. <br>Glad you&#8217;ve arrived. Glad you&#8217;re pulling back your chair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-base-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-base-background-color has-background is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-36139-2\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/05\/Good-god-damn-potter.mp3?_=2\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/05\/Good-god-damn-potter.mp3\">https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/332\/2024\/05\/Good-god-damn-potter.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Good God Damn<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The man under the broken pick-up, snow-plow attached,<br>was not visible but we could hear him <em>fuck, fuck, oh<\/em><br><em>shit! <\/em>trying to fix whatever it was by the side of the road\u2014<br>thirty-eight degrees, light rain falling, snow on its way his<br>friend handing the wrong tool though no one of the two <br>had what they needed. He was down on his back in the wet <br>fuck of fall at the side of the road and the fuck of it all<br>traveling down the street to the pup at nine months who <br>just wanted to sit there and listen as he could not see<br>the man but he could feel what <em>fuck this shit <\/em>meant and <br><em>oh good god damned motherfucker <\/em>and seemed to get<br>what that tremor in the voice meant as well as the clunk of <br>metal on metal one more thing to learn about us humans I <br>suppose pup looking at me knowing something about my<br>current undercurrents but not so much that he thought it<br>necessary to <em>get the fuck up, c&#8217;mon, not your business, <\/em>me<br>tugging at the least the man under the truck out of luck<br>deep inside the machine of it all the rust my little dog just<br>now suspecting maybe there was something not quite right<br>in the world he&#8217;d found himself leashed to my hands like small<br>supplicants smile on my lip little clip at the end of the least<br>treats in my pockets bits of old hot dog random kibble. <\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3390,"featured_media":35509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue-featured-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36139"}],"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\/3390"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36139"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38828,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36139\/revisions\/38828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}