{"id":3396,"date":"2012-10-04T16:18:57","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T22:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=3396"},"modified":"2012-10-04T16:19:42","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T22:19:42","slug":"because-its-national-poetry-day-a-poem-by-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=3396","title":{"rendered":"Because it’s National Poetry Day, a poem by me."},"content":{"rendered":"

This first appeared years ago in the online speculative publication Strange Horizons<\/a><\/em><\/span>, and was my very first professional sale. It is particularly appropriate to what I am reading and researching right now for The Quantum League<\/em>, so it seemed a fitting time to re-post it.<\/p>\n

In Their Element<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

It’s a Saturday night<\/p>\n

at the Accelerator Club.<\/p>\n

The band is playing a quantum reel,<\/p>\n

while atoms trade photons and gravitons<\/p>\n

like dance cards.<\/p>\n

Particles particular about how they interact<\/p>\n

are pulled together,<\/p>\n

or forced apart.<\/p>\n

Some nights are slow,<\/p>\n

relatively speaking,<\/p>\n

weighed down with talk of dark matters,<\/p>\n

while others are a frenzy, a frenetic exchange<\/p>\n

of flirts and whispers<\/p>\n

of who’s coming together and who’s breaking up.<\/p>\n

But it is never dull.<\/p>\n

There is always the chance<\/p>\n

of a spectacle;<\/p>\n

the nobility passing through<\/p>\n

without so much as a condescending nod,<\/p>\n

or some unstable debutante coming apart<\/p>\n

under the pressure,<\/p>\n

and you should see the chaos on the floor when<\/p>\n

dancers collide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This first appeared years ago in the online speculative publication Strange Horizons, and was my very first professional sale. It is particularly appropriate to what I am reading and researching right now for The Quantum League, so it seemed a fitting time to re-post it.
\nIn Their Element<\/p>\n

It’s a Saturday night
\nat the Accelerator Club.
\nThe band is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-SM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3396"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3398,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3396\/revisions\/3398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}