{"id":1089,"date":"2019-11-07T18:42:12","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T18:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=1089"},"modified":"2019-11-07T18:42:12","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T18:42:12","slug":"bikulege","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=1089","title":{"rendered":"Vivian I. Bikulege"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Lowcountry Elegy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Remember,\nwestern Pennsylvania?\nWe collected red oak\nand yellow maple leaves\nfor grade school projects.\n\nNow,&nbsp;\nwe travel the old Woods Bridge\nover a mirror, the Beaufort River,\nimages of blue white clouds whisked\ninto slate gray.\n\nHere,&nbsp;\nthe dancer, cordgrass, sways.\nGreen stalk arms wave yellow\non a strange tidal stage,\nlowcountry autumn.\n\nLast night,&nbsp;\na harvest moon orbited full,&nbsp;\naligning with Mars, then Jupiter,\nSaturn, then Venus,\na planetary arc of heavenly bodies.\n\nYou,\nare gone now,\nmarsh breath exhaled as fog,\nsand print ghost crab apostrophes\nswept away by silent wind.\n\nMe,\nfeeding our garden\nwith tears heavy\nas a Florence downpour,\na hurricane of good riddance.\n\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px;\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/vibikulege-scg-photo_101618.jpg?w=772\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1092\" width=\"155\" height=\"206\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/vibikulege-scg-photo_101618.jpg 1725w, https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/vibikulege-scg-photo_101618-226x300.jpg 226w, https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/vibikulege-scg-photo_101618-772x1024.jpg 772w, https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/vibikulege-scg-photo_101618-768x1018.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/vibikulege-scg-photo_101618-1159x1536.jpg 1159w, https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/vibikulege-scg-photo_101618-1545x2048.jpg 1545w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 155px) 100vw, 155px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>Vivian I. Bikulege<\/strong> is a graduate of Queens University of Charlotte with an MFA in creative nonfiction. Her 2018 essay, \u201cCuttings\u201d won the Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Vivian writes \u2018Whatever,\u2019 a column for the <em>Lowcountry Weekly<\/em> published in Beaufort, South Carolina. She is included in the 2009 Press 53 anthology <em>Milspeak<\/em>, and was one of nine winners of the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Fiction Open in Charleston, South Carolina. Her essays will be published in the forthcoming collection, <em>All That We See or Seem.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lowcountry Elegy Remember, western Pennsylvania? We collected red oak and yellow maple leaves for grade school projects. Now,&nbsp; we travel the old Woods Bridge over a mirror, the Beaufort River, images of blue white clouds whisked into slate gray. Here,&nbsp; the dancer, cordgrass, sways. Green stalk arms wave yellow on a strange tidal stage, lowcountry autumn. Last night,&nbsp; a harvest moon orbited full,&nbsp; aligning with Mars, then Jupiter, Saturn, then Venus, a planetary arc of heavenly bodies. You, are gone now, marsh breath exhaled as fog, sand print ghost crab apostrophes swept away by silent wind. Me, feeding our garden with tears heavy as a Florence downpour, a hurricane of good riddance. Vivian I. Bikulege is a graduate of Queens University of Charlotte with an MFA in creative nonfiction. Her 2018 essay, \u201cCuttings\u201d won the Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Vivian writes \u2018Whatever,\u2019 a column for the Lowcountry Weekly published in Beaufort, South Carolina. She is included in the 2009 Press 53 anthology Milspeak, and was one of nine winners of the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Fiction Open in Charleston, South Carolina. Her essays will be published in the forthcoming collection, All That We See or Seem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1024,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/page-full-width.php","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1089","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}