{"id":77,"date":"2013-07-25T21:17:59","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T21:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?page_id=77"},"modified":"2020-07-13T08:14:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T08:14:57","slug":"chemo-nurse","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?page_id=77","title":{"rendered":"Chemo Nurse"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<div><strong>Chemo Nurse<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"poem\">How wonderful you are, bursting late<br \/>\ninto this waiting room of politeness and fear<br \/>\nwith its Hello\/Country Life fantazines,<br \/>\ndiscreet fliers (\u201cHow to Stay Positive\u201d),<br \/>\nhelp groups, homeopathic diets<br \/>\nand Chapel \u201cjust along the corridor\u201d<\/p>\n<p>without apology showing everyone<br \/>\nwith a \u201cTA-RA!\u201d whisk of your ocelot<br \/>\nthe ladder running up your inside thigh<br \/>\nannouncing without tact or holdback<br \/>\nin a half Brummie half Jamaican accent<br \/>\nhow lucky it was you wore knickers today,<\/p>\n<p>taking by the hand one by one<br \/>\nthe women in not quite convincing wigs<br \/>\nor bald as an egg or surreal woollen hats<br \/>\ntowards what you call your \u201cmilking parlour\u201d,<br \/>\ntalking ten to the dozen so they hardly notice<br \/>\nbeing rigged up to the poison drips,<\/p>\n<p>talking ten to the dozen about the daughter<br \/>\nyou left (late again) at her first school,<br \/>\nmanaging even among the moon-faced<br \/>\nand eyebrowless to raise a smile,<br \/>\nfitting the needle so they hardly notice<br \/>\nhow difficult it is now to find a vein.<\/p>\n<p>In this palace of fake cheerfulness<br \/>\nwith its wipe clean smiles and flower prints<br \/>\nand a chaplain who asks if there is anything<br \/>\nall morning I hear naughty laughter<br \/>\nbillowing out from behind the screens<br \/>\nand think: yes, you are The Real Thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chemo Nurse How wonderful you are, bursting late into this waiting room of politeness and fear with its Hello\/Country Life fantazines, discreet fliers (\u201cHow to Stay Positive\u201d), help groups, homeopathic diets and Chapel \u201cjust along the corridor\u201d without apology showing everyone with a \u201cTA-RA!\u201d whisk of your ocelot the ladder running up your inside thigh [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-77","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}