Laurie Blauner
Laurie Blauner is the author of five novels, eight books of poetry, and a forthcoming creative non-fiction book. She won PANK’s 2020 Creative Non-fiction Book Contest and her book, called I Was One of My Memories, will be available in 2022. A new novel called Out of Which Came Nothing is currently available from Spuyten Duyvil Press. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, The Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Field, Caketrain, Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, The Collagist, The Best Small Fictions 2016 and many other magazines.
Tame
No response and the world became more world. The animal slept in leaves, a noisy weight, pieces from an occasional sky. I went to hold the animal and its surprise teeth. There was an introduction, guesses, jargon. Fur in my face and I wanted to offer a piece of my hand. Claws and I delivered my testimony. My human part began its own devices:
I told the animal one from the herd is sacrificed to save the others. (The animal fed on a figment of bird.)
I explained how to forget.
(Stars salted our skin every night.)
I told a story about water's disobedience.
(And the animal knew it could make me do whatever it wanted.)
Don't Ask Me
I find another and teeter over the dance floor. Strangers, with wet hands and bodies that take short cuts, are borrowed, and reflected in mirrors. I snag a sleeve, confess red lipstick on a starched shirt. There isn't much to discover in these entanglements except that feetkeep on moving. Our effort is covered with a music that drifts and then begins to whisper.Keep your head up, rings out. A flock of birds only suggests a direction. Our hands stretch, legs. I get lost in repetition and recognition. I lose my way. He gloves my hand, my eyechecks the distance between us. Step closer. We are all made of such small parts.