Suitcase of Chrysanthemums contributor Richard Loranger reflects on the third stop on great weather for MEDIA’s 2018 tour - The Waypost, Portland OR.
great weather for MEDIA slipped into Waypost Portland under a veil of chrysanthemums, and proceeded to shake the terrain with all those roots. Here are some of the petals that dropped in the tremor.
Portland leaves an open space. Portland is leaves. Portland is windswept. Portland is viscous. Portland is eaves.
To raise the show, Jane Ormerod falls, success the abattoir, fucking blondes, kneeling, swarming, tomorrow planned to fall, fairground darkness, you must be standing.
Portland is yearning. Portland is soil. Portland is mildew. Portland is must. Portland is urgent. Portland is resting. Portland is carnival. Portland is yes.
Mae Saslaw opened the mic, ocean at her side, old gods turned, sky to the ocean, what do you think it wants?
Portland ripples. Portland tides. Portland rustles. Portland hides.
Morgan Hutchinson closed the mic with heightened intentional ordination, sweat heat, determined reverberation, was a winter cleaning, exhaled lens of body, is it planetary?
Portland is fungi. Portland is fun. Fun has no known etymology. Portland has many etymologies. Portland springs. Portland rocks. Portland grasses. Portland leaves.
Sossity Chiricuzio turns into prose, hasn’t spoken for decades, remains so vulnerable in the name of an ideal, pounds this keyboard to dust, the loss of one parent by one queer, complicit of putting children in cages, disabled, the scales were tipped, written into law, the system they didn’t finish dismantling.
Portland is cracked. Portland is seething. Portland is bootstrapped. Portland runs. Portland sears. Portland soars. Portland speaks. Portland hums a soft indignant mantra.
Christopher Luna was previously incarnated, is a quiet, exploited the liminality, holes up at home, fucks the forbidden, remains secret, visions keep coming, would rather not act, is less than lucid, has no one to restrain him, cannot necessarily control what he’ll become next, leans as far forward as possible.
Portland is spectral. Portland is astral. Portland is fissure. Portland is mud. Portland is happy. Portland is taken. Portland cannot be taken. Portland abides.
Christopher Luna became John Sibley Williams as the planes went down, just down the hall, readying us for the world.
Portland readies. Portland braids. Portland sanctions. Portland shines. Portland twines. Portland finds. Portland shutters. Portland kinds.
Laura LeHew raises the dead, conjoined, doesn’t warrant revenge, fulminating, stretched over hollow vessels, echoes the land, dissolves small sea creatures, gasping for air, a global mass extinction charms mimosas.
Portland has children. Portland abstains. Portland whispers. Portland climbs in. Portland has sandwiches. Portland has trains. Portland has salamanders. Portland has brains.
Dan Raphael is covered in gray and raining on the frozen grass, engulfing, not peeling, still bubbling for help, more intestine than artery, is not asking for directions, waiting for the DNA test, displays simultaneously, fermented by squirrels, who else is living there more functional and intelligent than we could ever?
Portland is waypost. Portland is way. Portland is crossroads. Portland is post. Portland is waying. Portland is playing. Portland is posting. Portland is host.
Pattie Palmer-Baker doesn’t want you to be scared, is intermittent, cannot communicate with bacteria, says please can you share equal time, flashes colors never before seen, exhaled reheated velvet, even dark matter sometimes, through the bay window a sort of scintilla, perhaps drifting.
Portland* has the flu. Portland can’t come to the reading. Jane reads Portland’s poem instead. Portland wrote a nice poem. There, I said it.
* starring Brad Garber as Portland
Kelly Terwilliger is a pleasure to be here, is a storm, is our rough beginning, the heaped clouds full of rain, needs a lot of paint, rough beast hard to see from inside, behind the emptiness of white, something soft, the mark of an idea of a body I don’t know, crushed to rubble, the tongue is blank, Alleppo grey, paints you with her eyelids.
Portland is sanguine. Portland is such. Portland is saturnine. Portland is much. Portland is sanctified. Portland is bare. Portland is fertilized. Portland is mare.
I take us down to the gut, to the gutted, to the gutted laugh, to the gut laugh of hubris before numbering a passageway home.
Portland yanks the rug out. Portland sails the sky. Portland makes a lemon cake. Portland skates a thin-ice lake. Portland finds a shiny stone. Portland rakes the yard. Portland makes an early turn. Portland climbs the rain.
Jane Ormerod takes us out, calls a cab, buys a box, sells a box, a million hushes adding infinity, bales a box, slice of lime horizon the lure of the foals, mess painless numberless across the gorge, hidden inside the soil, the sound of his body sprinkling a small town, washing their fond faces.
Portland lactates. Portland weaves. Portland champs. Portland gleams. Portland savors. Portland slides. Portland branches. Portland leaves. And so do we.
Seattle calls.
Next stop Tuesday October 30th at Vermillion Art Gallery & Bar in Seattle
Poetry and prose submissions for our 2019 collection are now open.
If you liked reading this tour blog, you might enjoy Richard Loranger’s monthly posts at www.richardloranger.com.