{"id":191,"date":"2013-11-17T16:59:52","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T00:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/?p=191"},"modified":"2013-11-18T08:46:55","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T16:46:55","slug":"aaron-burch-life-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/?p=191","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Burch<\/strong>: “Life Itself”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life Itself<\/p>\n

Sometimes my life seems like a series of years
\nwhere, every year, I feel a year too old to try something new.
\nEvery previous year looked back on, like, \u201cif only\u2026\u201d
\nEvery year, a lot of daydreaming
\nabout a time machine that would just take me back
\nexactly one year, to a time when I was sitting around,
\ndaydreaming about a time machine that could take me back one year.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure at what age the cheap to expensive grade
\nmatured into good to bad. When or why
\ncertain things start to seem worth it.
\nSometimes you gotta order your burrito wet.
\nSometimes an extra stiff drink gets you drunker,
\nquicker, for less money. And other times it\u2019s just a shitty drink.
\nSometimes you just need to pay the extra dollar for guacamole.<\/p>\n

Roger Ebert told a story about his father refusing to teach
\nhis son a single thing about his work. Wouldn\u2019t even let him watch.
\nWanted his son to get an education, be one of those professors
\nhe saw at the University, with their feet up on desks, reading.
\nMy father tried to teach me how to work on cars,
\nthe house. How to fish\u2014tying knots, the beauty of a well-placed
\ncast. He tried to teach me how to put my hands to work,
\nhow to take pride in work well done. And I tried,
\nbut am a poor student, truth be told. A poor son,
\nI feel sometimes, when wanting to beat myself up.<\/p>\n

I been doin\u2019 this since before Nas dropped the Nasty,
\nGhostface said. Me and Grandpa Ghost.
\nIt isn\u2019t quite true, but sometimes it feels like it.
\nI\u2019ve never had a \u201cJesus piece\u201d
\nmuch less one since \u201994, though in that year I did receive
\na cross necklace, made from railroad nails
\nat the end of our weeklong Youth Group mission.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I look back on those trips.
\nSome of the best trips, truth be told.
\nHelped build things, real things,
\ndid the kind of work that people talk about
\nas real work, or whatever.<\/p>\n

I feel like I should say something about my own Grandpa
\nhere. I want to say I wish we\u2019d had a better relationship
\nor just that I\u2019d known him better. But that seems to imply
\nwe had a bad relationship. I knew him pretty well,
\nwe had a good relationship. Still,
\nI wish it had been better.
\nOr stronger. Something.
\nI wish I was better at lots of things.<\/p>\n

Sometimes my parents ask the kinds of questions
\nI\u2019m not sure how to answer. Sometimes
\nI wake up early in the morning, see the sun
\nthrough the window, and think, who knows,
\nmaybe I am a morning person.<\/p>\n

Sometimes my collection of years
\nseems a pretty good set.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Aaron Burch is as excited to be a “crony” as he is to see this poem published. His debut collection of stories, <\/em>BACKSWING, will be out next year, though he seems to be publishing poems this last year.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life Itself Sometimes my life seems like a series of years where, every year, I feel a year too old...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue_one","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/bird.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}