{"id":21597,"date":"2010-03-17T08:10:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T08:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/?p=21597"},"modified":"2010-03-17T08:12:18","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T08:12:18","slug":"herd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/herd\/","title":{"rendered":"Herd"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David E. Oprava.<\/p>\n

The alarm is a key. Unlocking him every morning he rises to ablutions habitually. I see things around a pillow, table, chair, toilet, grey panes and this is everyday. He doesn’t see that’s living. He washes and eats, dogs a long walk to the factory. There he works alone amongst the numerous silences of machines. Blending into seamless sentences, he finishes and goes home to become a single syllable. An anonymous sound no more than refrigerator humming. He blends into the bland social fabric of anonymity, a no one doing nothing, infinitely. Waiting patiently, I greet him at the cusp of head and bed and begin the unpredictable ritual of being. I wake to bright children scampering, sun eating at the window and a tempting wife readying with hairdryer, kettle whistling, six billion dreams jostling. My job is a noise of moments and strong drinks afterwards before kids need stories, comfort, sleep. There is time between thinking. Wants, needs, interconnected aloneness only I can feel, not he. Buses crash, planes smash, wars unfold and TV bellows\u2026fear me. Shattered, I beg for reprieve. The alarm is key. I’ve tried to find the endless batteries within its beating, to un-function the mechanism between wake and sleep. It’s impossible. This is how he and I wrestle imperceptibly. He’s serene as I scream and whisper. I plead to be heard. Let me sleep, indefinitely. No. Awake only as long as needed he savors my inability to touch hallowed mundanity. I grovel to the seconds before his thoughts hit my plain. His mind, blind, alive with blank mentality, breathes freely. Within seconds, I drown to the stampede.
\n\"jan-2010\"
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nD.E. Oprava<\/a><\/strong> has been in over 90 journals online and in print and has two full length collections of poetry to his credit. VS.<\/em> with Erbacces Press 2008 and American Means<\/em> with American Mettle Books 2009. His third, Mettlesole<\/em>, is due out in summer 2010 with Blackheath Books<\/a>. He is also the founding publisher and editor of the small poetry and prose press Grievous Jones<\/a>. He lives in the UK with his wife and two small children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The alarm is a key. Unlocking him every morning he rises to ablutions habitually. I see things around a pillow, table, chair, toilet, grey panes and this is everyday. He doesn’t see that’s living. He washes and eats, dogs a long walk to the factory. There he works alone amongst the numerous silences of machines. Blending into seamless sentences, he finishes and goes home to become a single syllable. An anonymous sound no more than refrigerator humming. He blends into the bland social fabric of anonymity, a no one doing nothing, infinitely. Waiting patiently, I greet him at the cusp of head and bed and begin the unpredictable ritual of being.<\/p>\n

By David E. Oprava.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flash-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}