{"id":4016,"date":"2020-01-04T08:22:37","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T16:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/?p=4016"},"modified":"2022-10-25T20:19:19","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T03:19:19","slug":"puss-and-boots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/puss-and-boots\/","title":{"rendered":"Puss and Boots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boots was an early pet name I had for Nasrin, who is a rabid felinophile and had been asking why there were no poems to her in my works. It took almost three years, since in the beginning of our marriage I had just returned to academia, which can easily kill poetry. \u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1989, I went on a brief trip to Cura\u00e7ao off the coast of Venezuela to research the beautiful \u00a0creole Papiamentu, the lingua franca there, though Dutch is official and often used.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Those were the old days of long distance telephone calls, and connections were occasionally dropped. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Nasrin’s message was a worrisome one.\u00a0<\/em>Once the link went dead I had no way to console her without bouncing my thoughts off the moon.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

A cat allowed her table scraps
\nis how it has begun, this dim
\nDutch I\u2019ve heard for years
\nand now must learn.<\/p>\n

Dishes fix the azimuth
\nof which one caught your words,
\n\u201cSomething\u2019s wrong<\/em>. I watch
\nmyself as if I am not here\u201d.<\/p>\n

A dial tone replaced your voice,
\nthe response I couldn\u2019t find.
\nThe clever kitty scoots away.
\nThe waiter makes his rounds.<\/p>\n

Harried, he \u00a0speaks in Dutch
\nI somehow understand.
\nHe leaves. I try these sounds
\nto the lure the puddy back again.<\/p>\n

\u201cDear Boots, now but the moon
\ncan bounce my worry back to you.
\nWe are both cats, must live
\nfrom paw to mouth like them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boots was an early pet name I had for Nasrin, who is a rabid felinophile and had been asking why there were no poems to her in my works. It took almost three years, since in the beginning of our marriage I had just returned to academia, which can easily kill poetry. \u00a0 In 1989, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Puss and Boots”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[33,49,8,84,57],"class_list":["post-4016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cats","tag-edmonton","tag-memories","tag-papiamentu","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4016"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4662,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4016\/revisions\/4662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}