{"id":5237,"date":"2013-04-12T00:00:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T04:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=5237"},"modified":"2014-07-11T11:25:17","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T15:25:17","slug":"pikesville-giant-and-poor-devotee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/pikesville-giant-and-poor-devotee\/","title":{"rendered":"Pikesville Giant and Poor Devotee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/pikesville-giant-and-poor-devotee\/pikesville_585x585\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5467\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5467\" alt=\"Pikesville_585x585\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Pikesville_585x585.jpg\" width=\"585\" height=\"585\" srcset=\"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Pikesville_585x585.jpg 585w, http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Pikesville_585x585-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Pikesville_585x585-580x580.jpg 580w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 585px) 100vw, 585px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Pikesville Giant<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>She said, \u201cOh, honey, my heart goes out to you!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I kept on going.<\/p>\n<p>Dragging my walker down<\/p>\n<p>the frozen foods aisle.<\/p>\n<p>She said, \u201cWe all have our problems, don\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I guess she had her own,<br \/>\nbut not as many as<\/p>\n<p>The Jewish grandmother who wore<\/p>\n<p>make up to cover her Alzheimer\u2019s,<\/p>\n<p>She laughed and said,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYay, that was funny!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As I fell face first<\/p>\n<p>by the checkout counter.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Poor Devotee<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The pityfucker\u2019s heart has<\/p>\n<p>grown around a wheelchair spoke,<\/p>\n<p>and swallowed itself like a club foot.<\/p>\n<p>It beats to straighten crinkled fingers;<\/p>\n<p>it doesn\u2019t know the difference between<\/p>\n<p>half moons and pain pills.<\/p>\n<p>the only thing it enjoys more than the elbow<\/p>\n<p>room between shoulder and prosthetic,<\/p>\n<p>is kneeling on bedpans.<\/p>\n<p>when it thinks it understands the sting<\/p>\n<p>of muscle and bone, it sobs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It will never walk a mile in orthotics,<\/p>\n<p>or brace itself for the moment when<\/p>\n<p>it decides to break dishes and<\/p>\n<p>stop emptying the catheter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Tyler Kutner is a graduate of Carver Center for Arts and Technology\u2019s Literary Arts program, a two time Scholastic Regional Gold Key winner for poetry, and a second year student in University of Maryland\u2019s Jimenez-Porter Writers\u2019 House. Born with Cerebral Palsy, Tyler is a disability advocate and hopes he might eek out a living between freelance writing and public speaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She said, \u201cOh, honey, my heart goes out to you!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I kept on going.<\/p>\n<p>Dragging my walker down<\/p>\n<p>the frozen foods aisle.<\/p>\n<p>She said, \u201cWe all have our problems, don\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I guess she had her own,<br \/>\nbut not as many as<\/p>\n<p>The Jewish grandmother who wore<\/p>\n<p>make up to cover her Alzheimer\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":5467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,218,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5237"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5470,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237\/revisions\/5470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}