{"id":1700,"date":"2023-08-15T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-15T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2023-08-15T09:09:44","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T13:09:44","slug":"the-leaves-are-busier-than-my-mother-on-a-sunday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=1700","title":{"rendered":"The leaves are busier than my mother on a Sunday morning by Niesha Okere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>And they don\u2019t work. But sometimes the leaves follow Daddy from his car to our front door. They form a ladder to gather around the keyhole. That\u2019s why we never know the hour he returns. As a reward, Daddy lets a few leaves inside. They face plant into a small golden bowl that\u2019s filled with house keys to snuff out the clinks of the early morning. I look outside my bedroom window. I see leaves dancing in our empty driveway. When they get into fights I pretend not to hear. It\u2019s none of my business. Sometimes the sound of my stomach breaks up the party. Before I can say <em>sorry,<\/em> the leaves make their way to my window. Stupid me opens the window. The leaves climb inside my mouth. My hunger absent. I go downstairs. There are leaves on the kitchen table bumping their stems with Mama\u2019s Blue Magic and curling iron. Mama pulls into the driveway with a car full of groceries. She flicks a cigarette out her car window. It lands on a couple of leaves chatting close by. One of the leaves takes a puff and then walks it back to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Niesha Okere is a writer from Philadelphia. She studied journalism at Temple University, and her writing is published\/forthcoming in<\/em> Variant Literature<em>, <\/em>Allium <em>and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook <\/em>Blue Girls <em>is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>And they don\u2019t work. But sometimes the leaves follow Daddy from his car to our front door. They form a ladder to gather around the <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=1700\" title=\"The leaves are busier than my mother on a Sunday morning by Niesha Okere\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1702,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions\/1702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}