{"id":1235,"date":"2025-11-05T11:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/?post_type=product&#038;p=1235"},"modified":"2025-11-05T11:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:41:07","slug":"swerve","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/product\/swerve","title":{"rendered":"Swerve"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>by Laurie Blauner<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<style>\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t#tab_container_1232 {\r\n\toverflow:hidden;\r\n\tdisplay:block;\r\n\twidth:100%;\r\n\tborder:0px solid #ddd;\r\n\tmargin-bottom:30px;\r\n\t}\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1232 .tab-content{\r\n\tpadding:20px;\r\n\tborder: 1px solid #e6e2cc !important;\r\n\tmargin-top: 0px;\r\n\tbackground-color:#fffbe5 !important;\r\n\tcolor: #000000 !important;\r\n\tfont-size:16px !important;\r\n\tfont-family: Open Sans !important;\r\n\t\r\n\t\tborder: 1px solid #e6e2cc !important;\r\n\t}\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs {\r\n    border-bottom: 0px solid #ddd;\r\n}\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li.active > a, #tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li.active > a:hover, #tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li.active > a:focus {\r\n\tcolor: #000000 !important;\r\n\tcursor: default;\r\n\tbackground-color: #fffbe5 !important;\r\n\tborder: 1px solid #e6e2cc !important;\r\n}\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a {\r\n    margin-right: 0px !important; \r\n    line-height: 1.42857143 !important;\r\n    border: 1px solid #ece8d2 !important;\r\n    border-radius: 0px 0px 0 0 !important; \r\n\tbackground-color: #fffbe5 !important;\r\n\tcolor: #000000 !important;\r\n\tpadding: 15px 18px 15px 18px !important;\r\n\ttext-decoration: none !important;\r\n\tfont-size: 14px !important;\r\n\ttext-align:center !important;\r\n\tfont-family: Open Sans !important;\r\n}\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a:focus {\r\noutline: 0px !important;\r\n}\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a:before {\r\n\tdisplay:none !important;\r\n}\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a:after {\r\n\tdisplay:none !important ;\r\n}\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li{\r\npadding:0px !important ;\r\nmargin:0px;\r\n}\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a:hover , #tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a:focus {\r\n    color: #000000 !important;\r\n    background-color: #fffbe5 !important;\r\n\tborder: 1px solid #ece8d2 !important;\r\n\t\r\n}\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li > a .fa{\r\n\r\nmargin-right:5px !important;\r\n\r\nmargin-left:5px !important;\r\n\r\n\r\n}\r\n\r\n\t\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs a{\r\n\t\t\tbackground-image: none;\r\n\t\t\tbackground-position: 0 0;\r\n\t\t\tbackground-repeat: repeat-x;\r\n\t\t}\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li {\r\n    float: left;\r\n    margin-bottom: -1px !important;\r\n\tmargin-right:0px !important; \r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n#tab_container_1232 .tab-content{\r\noverflow:hidden !important;\r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n@media (min-width: 769px) {\r\n\r\n\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li{\r\n\t\tfloat:left !important ;\r\n\t\t\t\tmargin-right:-1px !important;\r\n\t\t\t\t\t}\r\n\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs{\r\n\t\tfloat:none !important;\r\n\t\tmargin:0px !important;\r\n\t}\r\n\r\n\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li {\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t}\r\n\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav{\r\n\t\t\t}\r\n\r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n@media (max-width: 768px) {\r\n\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li {\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t}\r\n\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav{\r\n\t\t\t}\r\n}\r\n\r\n\r\n\t.wpsm_nav-tabs li:before{\r\n\t\tdisplay:none !important;\r\n\t}\r\n\r\n\t@media (max-width: 768px) {\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t.wpsm_nav-tabs{\r\n\t\t\tmargin-left:0px !important;\r\n\t\t\tmargin-right:0px !important; \r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t}\r\n\t\t\t\t#tab_container_1232 .wpsm_nav-tabs > li{\r\n\t\t\tfloat:none !important;\r\n\t\t}\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t}\t\t\t\t<\/style>\r\n\t\t\t\t<div id=\"tab_container_1232\" >\r\n\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t<ul class=\"wpsm_nav wpsm_nav-tabs\" role=\"tablist\" id=\"myTab_1232\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li role=\"presentation\"  class=\"active\"  onclick=\"do_resize()\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"#tabs_desc_1232_1\" aria-controls=\"tabs_desc_1232_1\" role=\"tab\" data-toggle=\"tab\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span>Overview<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li role=\"presentation\"  onclick=\"do_resize()\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"#tabs_desc_1232_2\" aria-controls=\"tabs_desc_1232_2\" role=\"tab\" data-toggle=\"tab\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span>Excerpt<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/ul>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t\t\t  <!-- Tab panes -->\r\n\t\t\t\t\t  <div class=\"tab-content\" id=\"tab-content_1232\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div role=\"tabpanel\" class=\"tab-pane  in active \" id=\"tabs_desc_1232_1\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"sm_text\" style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\u201cToday is yesterday with its hands over its eyes,\u201d says Laurie Blauner in her second nonfiction book, titled <em>Swerve<\/em>, which is comprised of twenty one lyrical, hybrid essays. Topics include crooked teeth, imagination, stealing, art, drinking, luck, surveillance, husbands, mannequins, ghosts, mothers, noise, sleep, nature, and animals and our relationships with them. Using poetic prose that includes stories, poetry, lists, and vignettes, she discusses distractions and inconveniences, time, our human foibles, as well as what to avoid and what to run toward. She asks, \u201cAre we all capable of going wild?\u201d and \u201cAre we our own mysteries?\u201d The book is a warning and a celebration. She observes, \u201cThis world, too, is becoming an argument.\u201d With surprising language Blauner presents perspectives on the world that intersect with what sustains it. These are the interrelationships of animals, plants, and people that live within this world. The book is mainly memoir although it includes various points of view, like a scarf in a souvenir store, a raccoon, a mannequin, imagination, and a pebble. Funny and strange, these essays can be read separately although the themes connect throughout. The future is a concern and the consequence of any taken action. Laurie Blauner claims as she swerves towards and away from everything, \u201cI was wilder but now I\u2019m tame.\u201d Is she<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\" style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\"What is between the real, felt, and imagined illuminates Laurie Blauner\u2019s insightful hybrid essays. These pieces are alive with unexpected transformations. Both amusing and profound, these essays reveal truths about ourselves and our world. Courageous and stunning, <em>Swerve<\/em> shows us what we must leave in order to get us closer to what we want.\"<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\u2014Rich Ives, author of <em>A Servant\u2019s Map of the Body<\/em> and <em>RatBoy and Other Stories<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sm_text\" style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\"Imagine a place of pure invention, glorious and effulgent, combined with a voice spoken from privacy and the memoirist episodes of a life: hers, ours, the lives of animals and trees\u2015this is Laurie Blauner soaring in her new book of lyric essays, <em>Swerve<\/em>. Always a writer of matchless ingenuity, Blauner\u2019s spiraling perspective in these twenty-one essays becomes an inquiry into what it is to be human. <em>Are you made of clouds or breath? Do you feel fire? Ice? I am a scarecrow left in a field wearing someone else\u2019s dress.<\/em> Like the word swerve itself, the book has many points of departure and return: murmurations, mannequins and their misadventures, wildlife (accidental and otherwise), kaleidoscopes and souvenirs, the ruined. Deeply perceptive and perfectly crafted, these are elevated pieces. The mood is alternately one of lightness, one of pathos. <em>She unscrews one of her hands as if that gesture proves her sensory deprivation. Then she fastens it back again. I\u2019m going on a journey.<\/em> With webs of language, idea, and form, Blauner casts a spell. Mesmerizing and masterful. Irresistible to dwell in this space.\"<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">\u2014Rosalind Palermo Stevenson, author of <em>Soul, Ghost, My Absolute<\/em> and <em>The Absent<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1233 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Laurie-Blauner-headshot.jpg\" alt=\"Laurie Blauner headshot\" width=\"193\" height=\"250\" \/><\/strong><span class=\"sm_text\"><strong>Laurie Blauner<\/strong> is the author of five novels, nine books of poetry, and a creative nonfiction book called <em>I Was One of My Memories<\/em>, which won PANK\u2019s CNF Book Contest. A new novel called <em>Out of Which Came Nothing<\/em> was published by Spuyten Duyvil Press. Her latest poetry book is <em>Come Closer<\/em> which won the Library of Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander Press. Her work has appeared in <em>The New Republic, The Nation, The Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, Bomb Magazine, Mississippi Review, Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, South Dakota Review, The Best Small Fictions 2016<\/em> and many other magazines.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div role=\"tabpanel\" class=\"tab-pane \" id=\"tabs_desc_1232_2\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong>Future Notes Under Stones<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I am lurching over uneven earth. It\u2019s so dry near the beach at Golden Gardens Park that there are only sinews of straw and lumps that were once grass scattered over bare ground. My body creases then collapses onto a bench outdoors as if some violence had been done to it. But I\u2019m just tired and too warm. I watch water fold over again and again in waves in Puget Sound in Seattle, a city known for rain that has had none for months. There is some evidence of wildlife: a small, jagged partial raccoon body among plants; a long, thin, grey tail squirming behind a rock; and a rind of fur left near a bush. In Montana, where I once lived, I saw a wolf running with a ribcage in its mouth near some abandoned, graffitied buildings in the middle of nowhere. When I followed its path, I found an unknown animal\u2019s tooth, but it didn\u2019t tell me which way to go to find the wolf or how to avoid climate change.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">What about the future? Yesterday was left inside me somewhere between my chest and shoulder bones. I must unlearn what I can no longer become. How can I make everything go back to the way it used to be? Or can I? I used to argue with wildlife about transitions by watching a bear seem to grow younger as she ran toward her cub or a deer leaping excitedly toward something too far away for me to see. Somewhere water leaked invasively. Back then, minutes percolated. Houses became rooms filled with small, friendly animals. But too many bones were discovered around riverbanks and so much debris gathered everywhere that humankind didn\u2019t know what to do with it. In the old days, things were attached to one another and nothing seemed foreign. We had a choice of winds, sounds, insects, birds, trees, seas. We didn\u2019t want to come up empty, not realizing all we had. Although it wasn\u2019t perfect, of course. Today can\u2019t be everything to everyone. Now the moon grimaces at us from the creaking sky as we rocket toward it without a purpose. Below, we unwind like ropes, knotting again and then falling apart. If rocks are watching us, strange creatures that we are, they would find the world too loud and then too quiet.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Today is yesterday with its hands over its eyes.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I crush spiders, using a paper towel, a magazine, or a shoe, inside of my house. But I don\u2019t kill them outside, which is where they mostly belong, although this is really just a matter of space. Sometimes, if I can, I simply move them outside, which might kill a house spider. And who am I? What or who am I becoming?<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I open my mouth or write lengthy explanatory notes called books. I sit in my backyard, except during inclement weather, watching spiders, with their tiny, pebble-like bodies, float toward the sky along their shimmering, intricate, labyrinthine webs. Is their web a house, an appliance, or a way of communicating? I study a damaged, sagging cobweb, which resembles a scowling, one-eyed face drifting between a chair and an umbrella. The web is made of a protein silk and its purpose is to catch prey, mostly insects. The vibrations let the spider know when it has caught something and the spider rises and parachutes quickly down. It wraps the kill in silk, to be digested later. Spiders are now growing larger and having more offspring because of the new weather.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong>Notes from curious spiders:<\/strong><\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Look the other way and enter.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">My hair is growing thicker so I can listen, smell, feel more.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I shiver with a web and then use it like a coat.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Your passing skirt and neck still seem attractive.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">My eight eyes rove to see you better.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Stones are the opposite of tensile cobwebs.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Smiling spiders cannot weep.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Wrap rocks until they learn how to fly.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Ladder, ladder, ladder.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">The uninvited, oblivious guest is the best.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Life is a thin constellation between heavier objects.<\/span>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">The changing climate inordinately harms sick and dying birds. They are draped sadly over boulders or lying on grass. Exhausted and approachable finches with salmonellosis from bird feeders, juvenile Caspian terns that jumped from a roof to avoid the recent terrible summer heat, and falcons, eagles, hawks, barn owls, merlins, and swallows have died or been injured. Too many songbirds and seabirds are suffering from toxins, parasites, or disease. This has changed their nesting and migration patterns. Will they adapt?<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Birds are able to fly, unlike the more stationary spiders. Humankind has already learned to destroy itself through historical massacres, wars, and genocides. Bosnia, China, the Soviet Union, Rwanda, Pakistan, Armenia, Native Americans, the Holocaust, and Cambodia are a few of the countries and events that have had their share of man-made ethnic, racial, religious, and political battles. Soon enough we will damage the planet beyond repair. We have migrated like the birds, and we have conquered and spread destruction because of our want. We have learned to fly without feathers for good and bad causes. We have polluted, leaving behind noxious eggs that are hidden and left to hatch from water, earth, and sky into something unknown. We hope to grow our own wings. Done with this world maybe we can enter the next one.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Although this stone leans against air, it remains where it is.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">A pamphlet about The Future, found in an old church, says that there will be no more unnamed suffering. It could be called Softening Appointments, In the Perpetual Waiting Room, Inconsistent Moods, Insufficient Diagnoses, Sore Scenery. We will need weightless representations of our bodies in a landscape that, hopefully, will remember nothing of what\u2019s been done to it and by whom.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Are we becoming the ghosts we were meant to be?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">What if we built houses from all the stones collected in America? What would happen to all the notes that were tucked beneath them? Would they disintegrate? Flutter away? Or would those structures eventually become Wailing Walls, where wishes try to reside between the stones? As we watch the United States move away from itself and become another place, I sort through the various shapes of injured clouds while asking the sky to tell me where it is wounded. What happens to the accidental wildlife? Do animals and humans spill out of houses that can no longer protect them and slip into streets and scenery? What kind of future could be scribbled on those notes?<\/span><\/p>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I retreat from the spiders that have overrun my home. I move my bird-watching binoculars into a closet. It\u2019s complicated living among Aves and Arachnids and all the others. It\u2019s an animal choreography. No one knows what the future might bring, with its violent shifts of bodies and their small gears inside, and with the world changing outside. There are still only theories.<\/span>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Tell me how to live so I can live like that beneath the nearest rock.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong>The Future as seen by birds:<\/strong><\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Spontaneous feathers erupt along human arms.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Embryos singing to one another.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Leaves shrink and the sky stains darkly.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">What hovers also sways, making bodies obsolete.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Wings, like tiny elves, flap everywhere.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Seeds press themselves against glass and brick.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Soar away now from the tenements of bones.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Wind gnaws everything to frilliness.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">The puzzle of a bird revives, to the best of its memory.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Air glides around a flying machine.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>A storm arrives but stones hardly notice.<\/em><\/span>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">In Missoula, Montana, my first husband focused on his future as he moved us from rental to rental, then house to house, and finally one state to another. He believed something better would appear soon. If success didn\u2019t occur, he became knotted, frustrated, and unhappy. This American expectation was dwindling. Sometimes he screamed obscenities at door-to-door missionaries or banged a bathroom door open so hard he left a doorknob-shaped hole in the nearby wall or drove his car manically. Once he yelled at me and my cat rose up on a sofa and scolded him to protect me. Later, my first husband died from a heart attack, having relied too much on his future.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Now I\u2019m preening for a party. I see a bright blue Steller\u2019s Jay, foraging, bold, unafraid, and hopping around my windowsill. They live in the moment, playing, stealing, and commenting on the present. I zip up my sage-colored shirt, attach square malachite earrings, and choose a ring to impress someone tonight whom I don\u2019t know yet.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>This world grows sadder as stones point me in different directions.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Dear Future,<\/span>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I remain clumsy with the language of animals. My cat and I fragment our demands, together and apart, combining past and present in order to create our future. I swoop into this scenario imprecisely because everything is fastened in both visible and invisible ways. A spider\u2019s web, half-seen in certain light, resembles an array of planets in the solar system. A bird imitates a meteor hurtling through space toward earth.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">I\u2019m content to be aging at a different rate than the universe. My husband, who is younger, helps me understand myself. Someday I want to study a meadow held in shadow, explain my feelings to air, listen to ocean waves that sound like heart murmurs. Write, read, dance. Can I survive without those things? Soon enough I will recall everything but myself, maybe a wreckage of starlings along a field filling with clouds and sunlight, or an abundant rain covering dark soil that begins roiling with new life, roots and worms. In the end I will be replaced by someone else\u2019s children or new ghosts or instructions on how to maintain a stubborn sky or maybe something like a television.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Rocks, covering all those notes, are grateful for the distraction of clouds.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong>Advice to future stones:<\/strong><\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Be more permeable. Allow the world inside.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Feel the incremental changes you are capable of.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Persist, even if you break something else.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Name all the words for stationary, then think of yourself as unencumbered.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Glisten, but don\u2019t smirk.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Hold one future above you and one below you.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Celebrate your endurance by lingering.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Be many and one.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Stop dreaming about piles of bald men.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Be careful about what clings to you.<\/span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Be neighborly, sleep under the stars.<\/em><\/span>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">#<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">This world too is becoming an argument. Today I disagree with my tomatoes, lettuce, and basil as to how long the earth pinwheels around the sun. I apologize to sunlight because I want to hold onto it longer. Clouds suture the sky\u2019s blue abrasions and bruises. I see a bird the same way I see words fly inside my head. A spider traverses my body, corroborating my helplessness to keep the world outside myself.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">A stranger in our alley calls to me, which rearranges my thoughts. I make room inside myself for something like talking. We converse generally about the odd weather and the animals we have recently seen and the ones that are missing. He is familiar and not familiar. I can\u2019t remember this strange man\u2019s face or name, but my pretending to know him feels as if it might go on forever. Until he frowns and all the contradictions of our relationship become apparent. We don\u2019t fight but he retreats from my fence, as if he could become entangled there. Suddenly he understands that we might not know one another, that I could be a replacement for someone else. We recede from each other. Nothing is mended. He pockets a pebble that could be one kind of a note for the future. We can only carry so much. He sheds some of his clothes at the end of my street as if they mean nothing. I still don\u2019t recognize him but feel as if I should. He retrieves the pebble and stares at it in his palm.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>The pebble might be asking the man: Is this world past saving?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t <\/div>\r\n <script>\r\n\t\tjQuery(function () {\r\n\t\t\tjQuery('#myTab_1232 a:first').tab('show')\r\n\t\t});\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\tjQuery(function(){\r\n\t\t\tvar b=\"fadeIn\";\r\n\t\t\tvar c;\r\n\t\t\tvar a;\r\n\t\t\td(jQuery(\"#myTab_1232 a\"),jQuery(\"#tab-content_1232\"));function d(e,f,g){\r\n\t\t\t\te.click(function(i){\r\n\t\t\t\t\ti.preventDefault();\r\n\t\t\t\t\tjQuery(this).tab(\"show\");\r\n\t\t\t\t\tvar h=jQuery(this).data(\"easein\");\r\n\t\t\t\t\tif(c){c.removeClass(a);}\r\n\t\t\t\t\tif(h){f.find(\"div.active\").addClass(\"animated \"+h);a=h;}\r\n\t\t\t\t\telse{if(g){f.find(\"div.active\").addClass(\"animated \"+g);a=g;}else{f.find(\"div.active\").addClass(\"animated \"+b);a=b;}}c=f.find(\"div.active\");\r\n\t\t\t\t});\r\n\t\t\t}\r\n\t\t});\r\n\t\t\r\n\r\n\t\tfunction do_resize(){\r\n\r\n\t\t\tvar width=jQuery( '.tab-content .tab-pane iframe' ).width();\r\n\t\t\tvar height=jQuery( '.tab-content .tab-pane iframe' ).height();\r\n\r\n\t\t\tvar toggleSize = true;\r\n\t\t\tjQuery('iframe').animate({\r\n\t\t\t    width: toggleSize ? width : 640,\r\n\t\t\t    height: toggleSize ? height : 360\r\n\t\t\t  }, 250);\r\n\r\n\t\t\t  toggleSize = !toggleSize;\r\n\t\t}\r\n\r\n\r\n\t<\/script>\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Laurie Blauner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1237,"template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[37],"product_tag":[77],"class_list":{"0":"post-1235","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-non-fiction","7":"product_tag-laurie-blauner","9":"first","10":"instock","11":"shipping-taxable","12":"purchasable","13":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/1235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rainmountainpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}