{"id":1356,"date":"2013-02-05T22:01:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T06:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/?p=1356"},"modified":"2013-02-05T22:14:07","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T06:14:07","slug":"brian-mcguigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/?p=1356","title":{"rendered":"Brian McGuigan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blood Brothers<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>I loved Run-DMC and my fake gold two-finger ring<br \/>\na dollar sign stretched over white, dry knuckles.<br \/>\nI spun on old cardboard boxes in your basement<br \/>\nuntil I vomited pork fried rice on your mother\u2019s<br \/>\n<em>chancletas<\/em>. I broke your brother\u2019s favorite Ice-T record,<br \/>\n\u201cCop Killer.\u201d I kissed your sister when you were at summer<br \/>\nschool, and we had nothing else to do but curse<br \/>\nand throw cockroaches on each other. I stole strawberries<br \/>\nfrom the Korean market because you weren\u2019t allowed<br \/>\nin after the owner, a little m__erf__er with a mustache,<br \/>\ncaught you\u2014that was when you\u2019d first taught me\u00a0<em>m__erf__er<\/em>.<br \/>\nI was \u201cRocky\u201d until I got my front teeth busted.<br \/>\nYour brother was \u201cScarface\u201d until he was arrested<br \/>\nand sent upstate. You were \u201cDo the Right Thing\u201d<br \/>\nuntil you didn\u2019t. There was that kid who got hit<br \/>\nby a car each spring. The old lady with her hair<br \/>\nin rollers except on Sundays. That was when we\u2019d play<br \/>\nsponge ball off the cement wall. You spray-painted<br \/>\nthe box\u2014our strike zone\u2014while I would electrical tape<br \/>\naround the stick. There was a sick obsession<br \/>\nwith \u201cStreet Fighter II\u201d and Chung Li\u2019s spinning leg kick.<br \/>\nThere was a two-liter of Coke that we shared<br \/>\nlike second-hand smoke. There was the time your mother,<br \/>\ndrunk, stuck her hands in our shorts to see how we\u2019d grown.<br \/>\nYou showed me how to keep my Jordans clean<br \/>\nwith hot water and a stiff toothbrush. You told me<br \/>\ngirls were cold as booths at McDonalds when one<br \/>\nbroke my heart like a bottle rocket that won\u2019t burn.<br \/>\nI remember when you and I slept in the same bed,<br \/>\nwhen your sheets were G.I. Joe until your mother<br \/>\nturned the light off, and the gunfire ceased.<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>&#8220;Blood Brothers&#8221; previously appeared in<em> City Arts<\/em> Magazine.<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>Born in Queens, NY,<a href=\"http:\/\/brianwithani.com\/about\/\"> Brian McGuigan<\/a> currently writes in Seattle, WA. He is the\u00a0curator of the popular reading series,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cheapwineandpoetry.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cCheap Wine and Poetry\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cCheap Beer and Prose,\u201d and the Program Director at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hugohouse.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Hugo House<\/a>. In 2010, McGuigan was shortlisted for The Stranger\u2019s Genius Award in Literature, and in 2008, he was a fellow in the Jack Straw Writers Program. Spankstra Press published his chapbook of poetry, \u201cMore Than I Left Behind,\u201d in 2006. His poetry and writing have appeared in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/cityartsonline.com\/issues\/seattle\/2012\/05\/blood-brothers \">City Arts,<\/a> Seattle Magazine, Rivet Magazine, Filter Literary Journal, Slipstream<\/em> and others.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blood Brothers &nbsp; I loved Run-DMC and my fake gold two-finger ring a dollar sign stretched over white, dry knuckles. I spun on old cardboard boxes in your basement until I vomited pork fried rice on your mother\u2019s chancletas. I &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/?p=1356\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,37,8,1],"tags":[452,451],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1367,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}