{"id":8586,"date":"2022-07-25T17:56:17","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T23:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8586"},"modified":"2022-07-26T10:54:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T16:54:43","slug":"the-geese-are-back-in-town","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8586","title":{"rendered":"The Geese Are Back (in Town)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-heading\"><strong>Iain Grinbergs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>They often wander along the artificial lake and ruffle their way through the small beech-colored field behind my rented apartment. I still wonder what they eat. I could look it up, but sometimes I\u2019d rather not have an answer. I wonder, too, how they stay warm here in a North Florida winter\u2014their feathers don\u2019t seem adequate. But who am I to critique creation? God, I hope this poem doesn\u2019t sound like a knock-off Mary Oliver. But if that\u2019s what I\u2019m worrying about, I\u2019d say, for now, I\u2019m doing quite well. Often, though, nothing ever feels enough. I hope I don\u2019t sound dramatic, but I\u2019ve looked up assisted suicide.\u00a0<em>You need to join a Zen monastery first<\/em>. I\u2019d just like to go out silently, not cause any fuss. I\u2019d just like to disappear into myself like a mindful black hole. I\u2019ve lived long enough to know that to get through the day, we must count small successes, like how I\u2019ve stopped picking my right thumb; how, at this moment, I do not crave alcohol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n&nbsp;\n\n\n\n<hr\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>IAIN GRINBERGS<\/strong>\u00a0(he\/they) is a PhD student in creative writing at Florida State University. He\u2019s a finalist for Black Lawrence Press\u2019s Fall 2021 Black River Chapbook Competition. You can find his recent work in\u00a0<em>Wilderness House Literary Review<\/em>\u00a0and forthcoming from\u00a0<em>Ghost Parachute\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Juke Joint<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iain Grinbergs They often wander along the artificial lake and ruffle their way through the small beech-colored field behind my rented apartment. I still wonder what they eat. I could look it up, but sometimes I\u2019d rather not have an &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8586\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8583,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8586","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-2eu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8593,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8586\/revisions\/8593"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}