{"id":1700,"date":"2013-06-10T02:23:19","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T02:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2017-07-11T20:44:17","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T20:44:17","slug":"a-calm-clears-the-very-air-he-breathes-by-rohan-chhetri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/a-calm-clears-the-very-air-he-breathes-by-rohan-chhetri\/","title":{"rendered":"a calm clears the very air he breathes by Rohan Chhetri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ghost.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1127 lazyload\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ghost.png\" alt=\"ghost\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 500px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 500\/400;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">a calm clears the very air he breathes<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">by Rohan Chhetri<\/p>\n<p>Grandfather is dying.<br \/>\nMother wants to say it out loud.<br \/>\nA slow rigor mortis setting<br \/>\nlike a fugue on a frail respiring body.<br \/>\nIt is choking him in the throat.<br \/>\nIt is fastening its blue tentacles<br \/>\naround his urinary tract.<br \/>\nHis bladders writhing with stale urine.<\/p>\n<p>He wakes up baffled in the night<br \/>\ncalling out to the living, shouting until<br \/>\nsomeone says yes.<br \/>\nHe blinks at my mother barely seeing<br \/>\nlifts a trembling hand and tries to read her face<br \/>\nlike a blind man.<br \/>\nHe smiles.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps he sees his young wife.<br \/>\nPerhaps forty long years after her death<br \/>\nhe finally understands<br \/>\nwhy she seemed so<br \/>\ncheerful the afternoon she died legless<br \/>\nin that bright hospital room.<\/p>\n<p>On the table beside her<br \/>\nthe empty plate she had eaten from.<br \/>\nHim holding the plate in his hands<br \/>\nlong after she was taken to the mortuary,<br \/>\nreading the traces of her fingertips on the leftovers.<\/p>\n<p>###<br \/>\nRohan Chhetri lives in Delhi. His poetry has been published in Eclectica, Rattle, 34th Parallel, Weyfarers, andThe Antigonish Review, among others. He works as an editor at Hachette India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rohan Chhetri lives in Delhi. His poetry has been published in Eclectica, Rattle, 34th Parallel, Weyfarers, andThe Antigonish Review, among others. He works as an editor  MORE&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[413],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-poems"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}