{"id":16161,"date":"2026-03-15T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T22:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=16161"},"modified":"2026-03-16T00:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T22:04:05","slug":"poem-by-richard-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=16161","title":{"rendered":"poem by Richard Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Virgin brides and tennis players<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Corpses always dress in white<br \/>\nlike virgin brides and tennis players<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Oblivious to cheers and lamentation<br \/>\nat the celebration of their sacrifice<\/p>\n<p>uniforms to attract marauding stares<br \/>\ncenters of attention but there\u2019s a catch.<\/p>\n<p>After the party after the wake<br \/>\nsudden isolation falls like a beaded curtain<\/p>\n<p>like pebbles on polished hollow oak<br \/>\napplause in the democratic bleachers.<\/p>\n<p>Unseen and unmolested they tear up towels<br \/>\ninto squares of lacy gauze to mop up<\/p>\n<p>Pools of hymen blood so thin and bright<br \/>\nso salinated with sweat and tears and loss<\/p>\n<p>That an ad hoc loneliness ensues<br \/>\ncourting the disaster of divorce<\/p>\n<p>Sportive stories of the future dead:<br \/>\nlove, deuce, advantage, set, match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virgin brides and tennis players &nbsp; Corpses always dress in white like virgin brides and tennis players<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843,77],"tags":[1845,1123,1863],"class_list":["post-16161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-88","category-english","tag-egophobia-88","tag-english","tag-richard-collins"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-4cF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16162,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161\/revisions\/16162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}