Hi.  My name's Andrew Rose Gregory and I'm reading from Laura Eve Engel's Things That Go.  Laura Eve and I have known each other for a really long time and I was super excited to find out that she was writing a book that is a kind of a retelling of the story of Lot from the Old Testament, except from the perspective of Lot's wife, which is a very difficult perspective to tell, considering she was turned into a pillar of salt by God, so I was really excited to see where Laura Eve was going to go with this and even more excited to see where she wrapped it up.

Look Out, Natural Disasters Are Everywhere!

I was in the Rio Grande.  It knocked me over.
I mean it knocked my breath around.
I was getting caught getting into something old.
Have you heard the one about the mountain
on the shore of the river that knocked its branches
into a deep green because it couldn't stand it?
It doesn't take hardly any time for me to forget 
to consider there's a real need to stand it.
That lesson is far from me but not
like that mountain.  Pictures of a river
on my phone remind me there are different kinds
of distance.  If I can eat shit in the current
and also stay upright it gets into being two people.
Finally, a way to step in it twice.  
For fun I try making travel plans without myself.
It's why we have two of every kind of animal.
She's somebody buying her ticket.  I'm back
in the river, now a wooden beam, now a form
I would have told you I considered
too heavy to move.