Lex Runciman

193rd Day, 172 Days to Come

--i. m. Erik Muller

Always in your own hand,

your letters on recycled paper,

an ancient diary page this time, a Monday

from July, 1971, on which you write that

though progressively diseased, I remain, for now,

fairly much at ease, before

more fatigue, more pain, yet, as you say,

on extended wing.

And only now I see

the slight tremor in the capital G

of Glide Path, naming the journal you're keeping,

and in the tailing f of fatigue.

Letter to Erik from Seal Rock

Dear Erik,

How to say what cannot be said? But I will tell you

this morning’s tide retreated about as far as it ever does,

sand and rocky black-gray lava revealed just as it looked 

once those lava red lines stopped steaming, bubbling,

flattening out, mounding and hissing as they covered

whatever they encountered – those drift-wood bits

that come up blackened charcoal hardened to stone,

the grain of growth patterns carbon-reflective even now.

Your death has left sorrow, and also a benign space,

wildly inaccurate to call empty… Sure, you say,

I’m happy to be here – sunny weather, sea lions

hauled out and collapsed. Let’s sit and not talk,

just watch the waves ashore. Later, you say, huh,

as though you’ve come to some conclusion. What?

I ask. Just this, you say, gesturing – this weather,

this hour, tide and beach… all of it. You’re smiling,

and you’ve closed your eyes.

Night Sky Timeless

from a painting by Joan Eardley

Catterline, Scotland, in winter

tilts more than a little off kilter, stone houses,

all one row attached – sturdy, gray-dark,

snaky, and stoic – about to tumble downhill,

though they haven't yet and they won't.

In warm beds, cold rooms, sensible people

huddle, mutter, snore – all but the painter

who cannot find sleep.

Whole-milk moon, slate frozen sky. Yellow-grass

jumble fizzed with rime. And snow

burning on its luminous own.

A sere and comic beauty hushed.

It will take your breath.

Sunrise, October 6th

and a hundred uncountable

flashing gulls circle and flare over

            small, slow-rolling brilliant surf,

gray wings, white breasts this first hour whitened

            as though by some inexhaustible source,

and they do not land on the sea, or

            if they do alight they as soon

lift off again, wheeling, circling, noisily

            keeping on, gliding low or

on easy almost lazy wingbeats,

            lifting as though this morning’s

late-in-the-year sun wakes in them

            an inner verve, undeniable,

theirs alone, sea’s air a wish

            only raucous flight can answer.

---

Lex Runciman's poem "Green" leads off the Willamette Valley section of Cascadia Field Guide. His most recent book is Unlooked For (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2022). New work has recently been featured on The Friday Poem website. He lives in that Portland close to the Pacific.

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R. C. Barajas

Creativity is Hard

Composite Series - David Up Down

Composite Series - Sarah Sideways

Handmaids Everywhere

Pinhole Monkey

---

R. C. Barajas is surprised by everything lately. Her writing and photography have appeared in The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Cleaver Magazine, Please See Me, Fatal Flaw, Defenestration, Hole in the Head Review, Northern Virginia Review, and Seities Studios. She was a finalist in the Fall 2023 Black River Chapbook competition (Black Lawrence Press) R. C. is a Californian by birth and temperament, and a Virginian through transplant. She lives with her husband and two loopy dogs.

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Rachel Vinciguerra

The downside of choosing a Frank Sinatra song to play at a funeral–

Is that you might run into it now and again, over your bolognese,

At an Italian restaurant. And the waiter will pretend not to notice

When you wipe your eyes with a checkered napkin and take big

Regulating breaths between sips of Montepulciano.

The other side of choosing a Frank Sinatra song to play at your Nonno’s funeral–

Is that he might find you again, once in a while, at an Italian restaurant

He’s never been to, or on New Year’s Eve in a hotel room in Miami

Watching thousands of tiny people under confetti and snow in New York City.

And every, single, time, the clock will stop for four minutes and thirty-five seconds.

---

Portals

In a room of open-eyes,

Wide-cut hearts and young

Women, with covered, fresh memories

Of blue, purpled, tender slices

Into our skin, our men point to

Their own–from motorcycles, sports,

Farm animals–healed, smoothed,

Stamped neatly on their faces.

---

My grandmother was keeper of the family history–

She carried a tin box of photographs, daguerreotypes and worn

Christmas cards from her home–where she lived sandwiched

Between generations–to ours, where we spread them out

On the kitchen table and scrawled pencil notes on the back. She

Was an only child, the only one left to carrying the glittering

Burden. Four pounds or four lifetimes in her palm. I remember

My own palm as a child in her home, smooth and steady over the

Wood panels where there was a knot; a splotch that sometimes

Looked like a dog from the corner of your eye. And how I felt our

Upstairs room was visited by a spirit decades before I learned of

Leona. My grandmother was keeper of family secrets, that she stitched

Into the embroidery of hundreds of clothes. That she held in her mind alone

For decades after my grandfather left this plane. Of Uncle Abe who

Lived with his family in a cornfield. Eight kids and an organ their mother played.

She remembered scooping ashes from the fire in tiny dump trucks there. My

Grandmother was keeper of glimpses–of walking along the canal with her

Grandmother picking milkweed for a sauce, of sitting on the lawn in her

Sundress eating fresh raspberries from her father’s garden. At four-feet tall,

I thought she was bold and brave living alone with her thoughts. But the brave

Came instead, years later, in a Facebook message to me, trying to get in touch

With my mom. She was the only one left with all those memories. My mom,

Picked her up and made a nest for her in my childhood bedroom with all

The glittering, the tin box, the dump truck, sandwiched right there.

---

Rachel Vinciguerra (she/her) lives fifteen minutes from the nearest river in Pittsburgh with her husband, cat, and chickens. She is a poetry and prose writer and young adult cancer survivor. Her poetry can be found in Rising Phoenix Review, Emerge Literary Journal’s scissors and spackle publication, Eunoia Review, and others.

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