{"id":19716,"date":"2025-09-07T18:09:44","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T18:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=19716"},"modified":"2025-09-07T18:09:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T18:09:44","slug":"summertime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=19716","title":{"rendered":"Summertime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"poem\">Ash-brown tatters lofted on pheromones,<br \/>\ngypsy moths flutter among boughs and across the meadow<br \/>\nlike confetti. Beyond hunger. Only sex<br \/>\ndrives the males. The females wait<br \/>\nfolded within crevices in bark. They\u2019ve lost their mouths.<br \/>\nAdmirable to be so single-minded.<br \/>\nJust days ago, as creepy adolescents<br \/>\nthey chewed the branches bare, littered the path<br \/>\nwith skeleton leaf-stalks, tore new craters<br \/>\nout of the canopy so the sky fell through:<br \/>\nwe, too, could strip a forest, strip<br \/>\na continent, but not so lacily.<br \/>\nThe lanyard on our neighbor\u2019s flagpole clanks<br \/>\nin the wind, the fraying stars and stripes<br \/>\nfluster and droop. The lime-green<br \/>\nkatydid impersonates a folded leaf<br \/>\npressed to the maple trunk, chiding, rasping,<br \/>\npreparing to mate and chew. Along the road<br \/>\nwild Sweet William and purple chicory<br \/>\nfestoon derelict beer cans and vodka bottles in the ditch.<br \/>\nWe have everything we need, but we want more,<br \/>\nand faster. The crushed garter snake<br \/>\nis scrawled on the tarmac in an ampersand.<\/p>\n<p><em>This poem appears in the October 2025 print edition.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ash-brown tatters lofted on pheromones, gypsy moths flutter among boughs and across the meadow like confetti. Beyond hunger. Only sex drives the males. The females wait folded within crevices in bark. They\u2019ve lost their mouths. Admirable to be so single-minded. Just days ago, as creepy adolescents they chewed the branches bare, littered the path with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[12098],"class_list":{"0":"post-19716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-summertime"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}