{"id":13240,"date":"2016-12-15T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T06:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=13240"},"modified":"2016-12-09T16:47:38","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T22:47:38","slug":"portrait-of-the-alcoholic-three-weeks-sober","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/13240","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of the Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first thing I ever saw die\u2014a lamb that took ten<br \/>\nlong minutes. Instead of rolling into the grass, her blood<br \/>\npooled on the porch. My uncle stepped away<br \/>\nfrom the puddle, called it <em>a good omen for the tomatoes<\/em><br \/>\nthen lit a tiny black cigar. Years later I am still picking romas<\/p>\n<p>out of my salads. The barbarism of eating anything<br \/>\nseems almost unbearable. With drinking however<br \/>\nI\u2019ve always been prodigious. A garden bucket filled with cream<br \/>\nwould disappear, and seconds later I\u2019d emerge<br \/>\npatting my belly. I swear, I could conjure rainclouds<\/p>\n<p>from piles of ash, guzzle down whole human bodies,<br \/>\nthe faces like goblets I\u2019d drain then put back in the cupboard.<br \/>\nSo trust me now: when I say <em>thirst,<\/em> I mean defeated,<br \/>\nabandoned-in-faith, lonely-as-the-slow-charge-into-a-bayonet<br \/>\n<em>thirst<\/em>. Imagine being the sand forced to watch silt dance<\/p>\n<p>in the Nile. Imagine being the oil boiling away an entire person.<br \/>\nToday, I\u2019m finding problems in areas where I didn\u2019t have areas before.<br \/>\nI\u2019m grateful to be trusted with any of it: the bluebrown ocean<br \/>\nundrinkable as a glass of scorpions, the omnipresent fragrant<br \/>\nhoney and the bees that guard it. It just seems such a severe sort of<\/p>\n<p>miraculousness. Even the terminal dryness of bone hides inside our skin<br \/>\nplainly, like dust on a mirror. This can guide us forward<br \/>\nor not guide us at all. Maybe it\u2019s that forward seems too chronological,<br \/>\nthe way the future-perfect always sounds so cavalier<br \/>\nwhen someone tells me <em>some day this will all have been worth it.<\/em><\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/13165\">Kaveh Akbar<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first thing I ever saw die\u2014a lamb that took ten long minutes. Instead of rolling into the grass, her blood pooled on the porch. My uncle stepped away from the puddle, called it a good omen for the tomatoes then lit a tiny black cigar. Years later I am still picking romas out of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[50],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3ry","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13240"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13336,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13240\/revisions\/13336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}