{"id":1640,"date":"2013-02-27T01:00:37","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T01:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/?p=1640"},"modified":"2015-03-26T07:03:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T07:03:04","slug":"a-nuclear-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/a-nuclear-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nuclear Moment, circa 1962"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By <a href=\"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/about\/author-biographies\/\">Mike Beasley\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cTake Cover!\u201d She bleats like a shrill recorder.<br \/>\nThe second grade class turns giddy with disorder,<br \/>\nTumbles from chairs, drops down to its knees,<br \/>\nAnd crawls under desks with no hint of unease.<br \/>\nThe percussion of pencils marks time on the floor,<br \/>\nThe teacher gets fixed in the frame of a door.<br \/>\nThe baritone screech of desks shoved askew<br \/>\nBy the boys and the girls and the janitor too,<br \/>\nThe giggles and hisses, the bickering friends,<br \/>\nThis nuclear moment for now transcends. . .<br \/>\nI loved that rehearsal; it blew me away\u2014<br \/>\nUntil the \u201call clear\u201d absolved my grave play.<br \/>\nBut what was I doing under that chair<br \/>\nImagining Death could not reap me there?<br \/>\n\u201cHey comrades, that\u2019s cool: Fear makes the grade;<br \/>\nThe Establishment strives to seem very afraid.<br \/>\nTheir machine manufactures that fear that you feel,<br \/>\nSo let\u2019s go, then, to Frisco and party\u2014get real!<br \/>\nPeace and love to you, man, on these cold war nights. . .\u201d<br \/>\nBut I day dreamed of ice-swords and snowball fights.<br \/>\nMy only ground zero was a yellowing tile<br \/>\nBlasting new floor wax with radiance vile!<br \/>\nAnd directly across from my fetal lair<br \/>\nContaminated Laura with the pigtailed hair<br \/>\nPlanted kiss upon kiss in her girl-germed palm<br \/>\nAnd tried to infect me; I tried to seem calm.<br \/>\nShe patted my forehead over and over\u2014<br \/>\nA triumph denied her on a playground of clover.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mike Beasley\u00a0 \u201cTake Cover!\u201d She bleats like a shrill recorder. The second grade class turns giddy with disorder, Tumbles from chairs, drops down to its knees, And crawls under desks with no hint of unease. The percussion of pencils &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/a-nuclear-moment\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2013-edition","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2078,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions\/2078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}