West Coast / PNW Tour 2018: Vermillion Art Gallery and Bar, Seattle. Reflections by Richard Loranger.

great weather for MEDIA learned many things in Seattle this time around. A great many. We learned about vermillion. We learned about fish. We learned about Tuesdays. We learned about righteous language. We also learned this:

Seattle has 1,434 words and phrases for rain. Here are some of them. Drench. Hench. Wrench. Cheese. Wheeze. Conglomerate.

KIMBERLEY PAVLOSKI screes the mic open, cradles like a song, herds stars, hurled into pearl, danced across the ceiling, the hand of night came down to close our eyes.

Wet. Great wet. Unusual wet. Wetter. Silly wet. Fanatic wet. Skeptical wet. Dangerous wet. Disinhibited wet. Soaked.

ERIN HUNLEY ZAMORA was not intending, has been colonized for upwards of fifteen minutes, had spent waiting, imagined to be the sinuses of a great beast, a young couple, rattling buskers, as permanent as the swathes of moths, and thus the mic is closed.

Rivulets. Spigots. Sinkholes. Shrinktales. Shirttails. Unbegotten. Rebegotten. Shimmering. Gadabout. Kindly. King rain.

JANE ORMEROD must be awake, maneuvers sound, is British, is nightfrost, a smattering of all, the real template of time, a lonesome novella, a punch for the writer, the essence in candy, is pure theater.

Queen rain. Queer rain. Jester rain. Whiskey rain. Salamander rain. Falling. Crushing. Elbowing. Echoing. Pulsing. Chiming.

CAROL GUESS is great to be back, quit tennis lessons, knit half a hat, quit everything, built quitting into her expectations, snapped gloves, sulked a sulk, was brought coffee in bed, has gone feral, put her fists in strangers’ mouths searching for an apartment.

Pouring. Soaring. Torrenting. Warranting. Warrening. Coring. Excoriating. Dripping. Sipping. Whipping. Woo!

BRYN GRIBBEN declares lynching postcards unmailable, what’s always implicit in 1908, you’ve seen not even half of them, the telephone poles from which the black man was hung, it’s so humid that the dust motes congeal, cracking up your skull near the white space, stare at the row of white male faces.

Rue! Fantastic! Chitlins! Cavalier! Reckoning! Toad toe! Just a myth! It’s raining myths! It’s raining hearts! It’s raining ghosts!

JOSH ANTHONY shifts the mirror, woke up, troubles himself, can’t say he’s in the same body, the sound his keys make, a grease-stained part of him grumbles, you’ve got to be dead, how you’ll die in this or that shoddy apartment, calls you whippersnapper.

It’s raining tirades! It’s raining dictators! It’s raining cans of Coke! It’s raining swimming pools! It’s raining rakes! It’s raining shitakes! It’s raining crucibles! It’s raining thank yous!

As usual, I bring things back to square one by mansplaining the purpose of life and the purpose of fire. Please the burning.

Stormfrond! Hailmaster! Drizzleduck! Splashspectrer! Sleetshooter! Fastmasker! Downpourer! Dreamsnorer! Thunderdumper! Lightningeater!

MARY MACKEY eats library paste, spent a lot of time in the jungles, got to see it, saw light the color of blood and bruised plums, spoke in rhymed couplets, threats could not subdue her, jaguars licked salt from her hands.

Remembrances! Shuns! Slices! Divides! Canters! Upends! Chides! Deserves! Responds! Rains!

SHANNON BUSHBY read somewhere, I love you, where are all the poems, how she warns you to be nice, she is the tigress, gives you silence, showing who you really were, reaching, wiped coke from your nose, didn’t wear the hat you bought, keeps the photograph folded in two.

Pounding. Crashes. Drum rolls. Shatterglass. Shatterstone. Shatterbrick. Wood splitter. Singer. Scarrer. Toppler. Transformer.

JENNY MONTGOMERY has been a waitress, used to come in a group of three or four, manners were excellent, had never heard, examined the novelties of our time, suspension part of their lark, amused overexposures pretending not to know.

How could you rain like that? How dare you drizzle? What do you think you’re drenching? How could you hail? Hail! Hail! How could you even think about thunder? How could you cry?

G.G. SILVERMAN is thankful for a safe space for radical ideas, thanks us all, is retelling, the casting couch is real, auditioned to be a magician’s assistant, after she received the job in the wee hours, practiced folding herself, learned all the ways, compress and collapse, split in two, the bloodless mutilation, another form of collapse, how to breathe deeply, how to laugh loudly, drunk on being wanted filled herself with birds.

There is only rain when we are awake. There is only rain when we are alive. There is only rain when the world is spinning. There is only rain when the continents shift. There is only rain when we say the word rain. There is only rain when we breathe.

Seattle has 52,368 silences for breathing. Here are a few of them.

Our final two stops on the tour:

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.