Praise for All This Could Be Yours

"…a fine poet with a masterly command of language and imagery…" —James Welch, author of Riding the Earthboy 40

"This is Laurie Blauner’s fifth poetry collection, and, in my judgment, her strongest. Blauner has a rich fantasy life, which the rigors of everyday living are seldom able to dislodge. All This Could Be Yours abounds in highly original metaphors that readers will discover for themselves." —Madeline DeFrees, author of Blue Dusk

Making It Up As I Go Along

That’s the wrong waist I tell her in dance class.
Where hands are unhinged like bad grammar,

color jumps out at me. The random yes
or no of everything. Morality swirls

its poodle skirt. Stars outside the window
are attracted by their sameness and use night

to cover it up. Try mine. These heels
are killing me. The rose tattoo at her ankle

has no point, is a story without an
ending. My husband’s rasping in the corner

sounds like crickets on a summer afternoon.
The less he knows the better. And I want to

tell her something about shoes, about the nature
of things until they make sense. My kind

of sense. But instead I say whatever appears in
my head like stars are lurching toward

the river with their two-step, the body is
just water running through our fingers,

where did you get that rose? And I’m thinking
that what’s wrong has already happened..