{"id":208,"date":"2023-11-21T23:59:54","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T23:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/?page_id=208"},"modified":"2023-11-25T00:17:24","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T00:17:24","slug":"fight-or-flight","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/issue-6\/fight-or-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight or Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right\">by<span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Nathaniel Cairney<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rainy autumn night in Paris.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Low light, soft jazz, a smooth<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">wooden polished bar, the smell<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">of cigarettes drifting in<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">when someone opens a door<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">and I&#8217;m back there again<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">in the thick of midnight<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">chaos, smoke and neon,<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">glasses in midspill, white-<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">teethed screaming boys<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">nicknamed after meats<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">flinging themselves at one<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">another, the sheriff nowhere,<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">old man Chili behind the bar<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">reaching for a shotgun, Dwight<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yoakam yodeling from speakers,<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">hard-eyed women in jeans<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">leaning tense against the walls,<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">that rush of cold through my chest<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">as I saw what real violence<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">looked like, the instinct kicking in,<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">finally knowing where I stood<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">when it came to staying or going \u2013<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nathaniel Cairney is an American poet and novelist who lives in Belgium. His chapbook <em>Singing Dangerously of Sinking <\/em>was a finalist for the 2021 Saguaro Prize in Poetry, and his poems have been published in <em>The Cardiff Review, Midwest Review, Broad River Review<\/em> and others.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">[ <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/issue-6\/toc-6\/\">table of contents<\/a> ]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Nathaniel Cairney Rainy autumn night in Paris. Low light, soft jazz, a smooth wooden polished bar, the smell of cigarettes drifting in when someone opens a door and I&#8217;m back there again in the thick of midnight chaos, smoke and neon, glasses in midspill, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":882,"featured_media":0,"parent":199,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-208","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/882"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/roadrunnerreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}