{"id":1310,"date":"2014-09-01T08:05:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T08:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2014-09-04T07:32:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T07:32:21","slug":"one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1310","title":{"rendered":"One (the apple in this poem)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I set\u00a0a writer I am working with\u00a0the challenge of writing a 200-word story every day for two weeks. Each one has to be self-contained: each one featuring a new story, a new character\/s. I firmly believe that I should never set someone a task I wouldn’t be prepared to undertake myself. His task is to do this for 14 days; I’m going to attempt to do it for 200 days.<\/p>\n

So, here goes. 200 words; 200 days\u2014day one<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"Trisha<\/a>
Trisha Hardwick<\/a>. Apples and Chinese Bowl. 12×12 inches. Oil on linen. 2012.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once, she heard a poem in which an apple waited in a bowl. At least, she thought, it was not the usual story about apples and women.<\/p>\n

Because the poet was Chinese, the bowl she pictured was also Chinese. The apples were green, and the bowl white, with blue dragonflies painted on its surface.<\/p>\n

She plucked an apple from the bowl and weighed it in her hand. It was firm and cool. She remembered the girl she had loved; the one who had eaten an apple in class\u2014while the lecturer spoke about Anne Bradstreet\u2019s poetry\u2014by distractedly cutting circles from the apple\u2019s surface with her long fingernails.<\/p>\n

The poem they were studying was called “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and Half Old”. It contained a line about apples (By nature trees do rot when they are grown,\/ And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall \u2026<\/em>).<\/p>\n

The apple became a damaged red moon, with white craters spread over its surface.<\/p>\n

The apple in the poem could not be eaten; it would not fall. And the woman in the poem\u2014in this one, too\u2014would not, could not, be loved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I set\u00a0a writer I am working with\u00a0the challenge of writing a 200-word story every day for two weeks. Each one has to be self-contained: each one featuring a new story, a new character\/s. I firmly believe that I should never set someone a task I wouldn’t be prepared to undertake myself. His task is to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[725,1,167,288],"tags":[722,727,724,728],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-200-words-200-days","category-misc","category-on-writing","category-short-works","tag-200-days","tag-200-words","tag-elizabeth-bradstreet","tag-microfiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/apple.jpg?fit=320%2C305&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4LH1G-one","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}