{"id":169,"date":"2009-04-03T00:20:32","date_gmt":"2009-04-03T05:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/04\/03\/debra-nystrom-kids-running-downhill\/"},"modified":"2009-04-03T00:21:58","modified_gmt":"2009-04-03T05:21:58","slug":"debra-nystrom-kids-running-downhill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/04\/03\/debra-nystrom-kids-running-downhill\/","title":{"rendered":"Debra Nystrom, “Kids Running Downhill”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"debra-nystrom-poem.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\n

Howls along a pasture road; jagged
\nshadows rippling cheat-grass, each leaning back a little
\nagainst gravity except the one in front who’s hit
\nthe place where fence rails sag
\nand start curving up toward the wide
\nfield where the last kid decides
\nhe’s got to fall. He knows
\nin the heat the rest will drop after him—noise
\nof mockery, breath heaving,
\nthen finally quiet—turkey buzzards above
\nrevolving on the thermals,
\ntilting, scanning for a fox to trail—
\nnothing more, nobody thinking this a thing
\nto remember—who decides about remembering?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Other poems from Bad River Road<\/i><\/a>, Nystrom’s third collection, include “Twins<\/a>” (from Slate<\/i>), “Outer Banks<\/a>” (Poetry Daily<\/i>), “West River, Driving Home<\/a>” (Orion<\/i>), and “Window<\/a>” (AGNI<\/i>).<\/p>\n

Many of the poems call back to the South Dakota of her childhood; as she explains<\/a>, “My poems have returned there in different ways over time; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the setting where basic questions that occupy all of us seem to come into focus for me. My work does go other places, but South Dakota seems to stay in my peripheral vision. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an overwhelming landscape—starkly beautiful, the horizon all around you, and everywhere the sky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s immensity—there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a physical attachment to land, and to family, that draws me back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howls along a pasture road; jagged shadows rippling cheat-grass, each leaning back a little against gravity except the one in front who’s hit the place where fence rails sag and start curving up toward the wide field where the last kid decides he’s got to fall. He knows in the heat the rest will drop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}