{"id":7014,"date":"2019-06-23T20:35:46","date_gmt":"2019-06-23T20:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=7014"},"modified":"2019-09-23T15:00:05","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T15:00:05","slug":"grief-counselor-a-poem-by-brian-rihlmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/grief-counselor-a-poem-by-brian-rihlmann\/","title":{"rendered":"GRIEF COUNSELOR . A Poem by Brian Rihlmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nWe sat at the bar
\nsucking back beers
\nin that smoky roadhouse,
\nand you went on about it,
\nand finally said,
\n\u201cI mean, where is he?
\nWhere did he go?\u201d
\n 
\nYour father, gone,
\nthree months ago
\nin a freak accident,
\nhis pickup winding up
\non its roof in a ditch
\nfor no apparent reason.
\n 
\nYou looked at me,
\nand my lame answer
\nlimped out,
\n\u201cI believe that
\nwhen you\u2019re gone,
\nyou\u2019re gone.\u201d
\n 
\nSpoken like a good
\nand faithful atheist.
\nMy truth telling
\na matter of principle.
\n 
\nYou stared at me, nodding
\nand biting your quivering lip,
\nAdam\u2019s apple working
\nas you tried swallowing
\nthe bitter fruit
\nof my honesty.
\n 
\nI saw it, and quickly said,
\n\u201cBut what the hell do I know?\u201d
\n 
\nAnd some years later,
\nI remember you
\nangrily saying
\nthat when we die
\nwe just rot in the ground,
\nand I winced
\nat how you spit
\nthose words out,
\nand wished I\u2019d lied
\nway back then.
\n 
\n 
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n 
\nBrian Rihlmann was born in NJ, and currently lives in Reno, NV. He writes mostly semi autobiographical, confessional free verse. Folk poetry…for folks. He has been published in Constellate Magazine, Poppy Road Review, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review and has an upcoming piece in The American Journal Of Poetry
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times<\/a> ; his publications include
\n 
\nAll the Babble of the Souk<\/em> <\/a>, Cartoon Molecules<\/em> and Next Arrivals<\/em>, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande\u00b4s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist<\/em> <\/a> and the recently published Tesserae<\/em> <\/a> <\/u>, a translation of Carmen Crespo\u00b4s Teselas.
\n 
\nYou may visit Aquillrelle.com\/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop <\/a>about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)<\/a><\/p>\n

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  We sat at the bar sucking back beers in that smoky roadhouse, and you went on about it, and finally said, \u201cI mean, where is he? Where did he go?\u201d   Your father, gone, three months ago in a freak accident, his pickup winding up on its roof in a ditch for no apparent … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[868,808,796,366,401,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7014"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7014"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7117,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7014\/revisions\/7117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}