A Future Unmappable

<p>There's a rope between two burning towers. One tower burns anxiously. The other tower (the left side of the brain) burns orderly. Randall is dancing on that rope. It is the motion-a footfall a locomotive blowing hard a wave-that keeps her from falling. An ecstasy is a song to motion to ex stasis and Randall belts it true enough to pop the deepest bass string on your Fender Squier guitar.</p><p><strong> -Barrett Warner</strong> <em>Why Is It So Hard to Kill You?</em></p><p><br></p><p>These powerful poems erode our physical boundaries leaving us to explore mental illness as a patient and as a caregiver alternatively. With ferocity yet in a ceremony of revelation Michele Parker Randall's <em>A Future Unmapable </em>artfully discloses the unfathomable struggle of helping a beloved come back from the brink. Honest and courageous each poem is a study of the much-needed conversation of what it is like to live with and recover from such a destabilizing experience.</p><p><strong> -Didi Jackson</strong> <em>Moon Jar</em></p><p><br></p><p>In <em>A Future Unmappable</em> Michele Parker Randall<strong> </strong>explores the nakedness of mental uncertainty: What is real? what is not? when unable to tell the dream-state from the wake-state / Try to free someone from inside a balloon. Muted tension screams in the torque of Randall's lines: coiledspring / a snake between the wardscape / walls how many worlds we / fit in one day. These panoptic poems offer a view from the in-between lest any of us be too sure.</p><p><strong> -Tanya Grae</strong> <em>Undoll</em></p><p><br></p>