{"id":7935,"date":"2014-04-01T00:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T05:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=7935"},"modified":"2015-02-15T18:55:38","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T00:55:38","slug":"north-matthew-wimberley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/7935","title":{"rendered":"North"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A stranger gave me the rest of him<br \/>\nthe way a clerk at a grocery store<br \/>\nhands over the potatoes, eggs,<br \/>\ndiscount steak and pimento cheese<br \/>\nin a plastic bag. I wasn\u2019t ready<br \/>\nfor how light the body can be.<br \/>\nHours before, I saw my father<br \/>\nhushed in his casket, smelling<br \/>\nof Irish Spring and cologne<br \/>\nchosen for him. Like any child<br \/>\nI wanted to un-tuck his arm<br \/>\nfrom his side and crawl<br \/>\ninto the made space. Twenty hours<br \/>\nafter his body used up<br \/>\nits unknown store of life<br \/>\nthey called me to sign the death-papers.<br \/>\nThey interred half of his ashes,<br \/>\nwhich were now my ashes,<br \/>\nin a garden-plot in Richmond, Virginia.<br \/>\nWhen the ceremony was done<br \/>\nan iron fence hinged<br \/>\nmusic over <em>I\u2019m sorry for your loss<\/em><br \/>\nand <em>He was a kind man<\/em>.<br \/>\nHow many times have I meant<br \/>\nto give the rest of him<br \/>\nback to the earth?<br \/>\nWhat kept my hands<br \/>\nfrom the draw-string?<br \/>\nOutside of Roswell<br \/>\nwhere the city-light horizon glowed<br \/>\nlike bones on an x-ray, I wanted<br \/>\nto spread him into rabbit-brush.<br \/>\nAgain in Whitefish\u2014<br \/>\nwhere I\u2019d stopped at a liquor store,<br \/>\nthought about leaving the bag<br \/>\nnext to the neon \u201cOpen\u201d sign.<br \/>\nI got in my car and left\u2014the road<br \/>\nunwinding, outrunning nothing, my father<br \/>\na secret I couldn\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"\/nashvillereview\/archives\/7911\">Matthew Wimberley<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A stranger gave me the rest of him the way a clerk at a grocery store hands over the potatoes, eggs, discount steak and pimento cheese in a plastic bag. I wasn\u2019t ready for how light the body can be. Hours before, I saw my father hushed in his casket, smelling of Irish Spring and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-23Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7935"}],"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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10218,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7935\/revisions\/10218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}