{"id":217,"date":"2004-01-01T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2004-01-01T00:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/juicepress.theliteraryunderground.net\/?p=217"},"modified":"2004-01-01T00:00:01","modified_gmt":"2004-01-01T00:00:01","slug":"blehert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/2004\/01\/01\/blehert\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving by Dean Blehert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Giving<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>The featherbed, we say, &#8220;gives,&#8221; meaning<br \/>\nit accepts one&#8217;s shape. Water gives<br \/>\n(ice doesn&#8217;t). Air gives. The givers<br \/>\ngive way, wrap themselves around us,<br \/>\nshape themselves to us, receive and<br \/>\nrelease us easily with a sigh or kiss<br \/>\nof gentle suction or a rustle of sheets<br \/>\nor a smile in brimming eyes. What<br \/>\ncan you be given? Apparently yourself,<br \/>\nor your own form shaping another,<br \/>\napparently the right to be part of and<br \/>\nseparate from another. What you can be given<br \/>\ndepends on the gentleness of your asking:<br \/>\nIf you hit the water too hard, it becomes<br \/>\nstone. If you force yourself through air<br \/>\ntoo fast, it shudders, splits, jolting you,<br \/>\nclaps together behind you (BOOM). Violence<br \/>\nshatters whatever opens to embrace you;<br \/>\nsplinters stick to you; the violent never<br \/>\nhave anything whole, never leave anything<br \/>\nwholly behind.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Dean Blehert <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Giving The featherbed, we say, &ldquo;gives,&rdquo; meaning it accepts one&rsquo;s shape. Water gives (ice doesn&rsquo;t). Air gives. The givers give way, wrap themselves around us, shape themselves to us, receive and release us easily with a sigh or kiss of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/2004\/01\/01\/blehert\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20,21],"tags":[124,86],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-17","category-dean-blehert","category-dean-blehert-2004","tag-124","tag-dean-blehert-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}