{"id":15642,"date":"2014-08-21T23:31:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T23:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/who-burns-for-the-perfection-of-paper\/"},"modified":"2014-08-21T23:31:45","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T23:31:45","slug":"who-burns-for-the-perfection-of-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/who-burns-for-the-perfection-of-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lifeandcode.tumblr.com\/post\/95335295378\/who-burns-for-the-perfection-of-paper\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">lifeandcode<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/a48d3cd517bed209a3f079c58a1a64d2\/tumblr_inline_namxtnMxrh1qzdxgo.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Side note: \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I forgot my notebook &amp; bought a spare at CVS today. \u00a0In a meeting, I turned it over, and noting the Made in China designation, I remembered a poem I learned from the author years ago, about the people in the factories making paper pads &amp; notebooks:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper<\/strong><br \/><em>Mart\u00edn Espada<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At sixteen, I worked after high school hours<br \/>at a printing plant<br \/>that manufactured legal pads:<br \/>Yellow paper<br \/>stacked seven feet high<br \/>and leaning<br \/>as I slipped cardboard<br \/>between the pages,<br \/>then brushed red glue<br \/>up and down the stack.<br \/>No gloves: fingertips required<br \/>for the perfection of paper,<br \/>smoothing the exact rectangle.<br \/>Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands<br \/>would slide along suddenly sharp paper,<br \/>and gather slits thinner than the crevices<br \/>of the skin, hidden.<br \/>The glue would sting,<br \/>hands oozing<br \/>till both palms burned<br \/>at the punch clock.<\/p>\n<p>Ten years later, in law school,<br \/>I knew that every legal pad<br \/>was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,<br \/>that every open law book<br \/>was a pair of hands<br \/>upturned and burning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"credit\">from\u00a0<em>City of Coughing and Dead Radiators<\/em>, 1993<br \/>W.W. Norton &amp; Company, Inc., New York, NY<\/p>\n<p class=\"credit\">Copyright 1993 by Mart\u00edn Espada.<br \/>All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>lifeandcode: Side note: \u00a0 I forgot my notebook &amp; bought a spare at CVS today. \u00a0In a meeting, I turned it over, and noting the Made in China designation, I remembered a poem I learned from the author years ago, about the people in the factories making paper pads &amp; notebooks: Who Burns for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-44i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}