{"id":14,"date":"2009-12-31T07:00:14","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T07:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=14"},"modified":"2012-01-31T07:34:26","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T07:34:26","slug":"ode-to-the-competent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2009\/12\/ode-to-the-competent\/","title":{"rendered":"Ode to the Competent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The post officers: there are two of them here at the desk.<br \/>\nOne mouthing-in letters that never were there in addresses<br \/>\nin foreign script &#8212; a quite-understandable gaffe,<br \/>\nuntil it just cripples her into a useless, blank stare.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing more to say of that officer here,<br \/>\nbecause just then the other one rises up, the barrel of<br \/>\nher torso turning about as she pushes her chair to its place.<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;ll do it,&#8221; she says, or something like that, and takes charge.<\/p>\n<p>Not pretty. I&#8217;m sure no one&#8217;s written a poem about her.<\/p>\n<p>A zip code copied exactly &#8212; one digit degraded<br \/>\njust like in the flawed source. She flubs on the keyboard,<br \/>\nasks a few times for the spelling, flubs, fixes, and skips<br \/>\nthe bits that don&#8217;t matter. My letters go out half-past five.<\/p>\n<p>No one is carving a marble statue of her triumph:<br \/>\nher broad thighs resting on the grey of a polyester<br \/>\noffice chair, ponytail tight, fingers fumbling and<br \/>\nkeeping this bit of the world from falling apart.<\/p>\n<p>No one writes odes to people who get the job done.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Gord Sellar, 9 Nov. 2005<\/p>\n<p>Published in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lulu.com\/product\/paperback\/diet-soap-%234-slavery\/13508295\">Diet Soap #4, 2009.<\/a>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The post officers: there are two of them here at the desk. One mouthing-in letters that never were there in addresses in foreign script &#8212; a quite-understandable gaffe, until it just cripples her into a useless, blank stare. There is nothing more to say of that officer here, because just then the other one rises [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[13],"series":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-kr","tag-korea"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xIep-e","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}