Kate Kearns

Back at the Party

I’m salsa dancing with my dad again, his hands

bounce mine toward him and away,

a parallel track our feet follow.

I’m nervous at dancing, being seen dancing,

and his lead keeps me moving.

It’s the birthday party we all remember

because Jan dressed as Bette Midler and

rolled in on a table pushed by handsome waiters,

her arms diva-wide, a hibiscus in her ear.

My dad, a brother to her, only needed a Hawaiian shirt

to become Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I. 

It’s come forward, that party, ten years since he’s gone.

For the first time, I’ve written him

and not the loss of him

which is the same age

as the granddaughter, my daughter, he just missed meeting.

His ghost, her invisible twin.

Here’s the thing about burial—what the burying

does—the ground takes the whole of him,

the broken hand never explained,

the countless, money-fraught wrongs, into the dark

to root. It takes a long time.

But today, the party’s back.

We’ve moved toward each other again.

My sister and I, some cousins our age,

remember it, too. We keep it in the air with us.

I want to think when I’m long part of the earth,

my daughter’s memory of me, mine of him

in its pocket, will return to her. We’ll all of us

take root again as better versions of ourselves,

wide and tenacious, nourishing

as dandelions signaled back in spring.

Personal Essay on Intimacy

The woman who has cut my hair forever       

washes it in the usual sink, and,         

as I’m sitting up, presses

towel-covered fingers in my ears

dries that uncomfortable pool,           

deft as a habit.

She’s got the moment timed exactly right,                 

my head upward but not quite.          

Our custom is older than my marriage.          

Has she been doing that all along                  

and I only noticed today?       

She must do it for everyone. Even so,

it’s a comfort she doesn’t have to give            

and I didn’t know I needed,   

a touch apart from love,

loving all the same.

Lately I Worry There’s Nothing Left to Notice in My Everyday Days

I came out of the grocery store and there was a star,

not the brightest and

            likely not a star at all, yellowish

            as a syrupy, overripe pear

                        which is shaped like a mother,

                        belonging to the earth.

I got in the car anyway, milk replenished.

Cheerios on the high up shelf,

bananas in the blue bowl

            on the blue laminate counter

            we mean to and mean to replace.

I went back out to see it again

            but it had taken its light

someplace else.

Somebody tell me what that citrus in the sky was

I only know

what I wanted it to be.

I remind myself over and over that a bell needs

            empty air around it

or it won’t make a sound,

that unproductive wonder

            is also abundance,

savory and sharp as the navel, off-center in the orange.

Love Poem to my School Friends

You’re the single I’ll buy again

every time the player changes,

the cassette worn with rewinding,

renewed to shine and spinning.

You’re Vision of Love in the cloud,

where I can’t see you, but know

you’re there—

girls, you’re Waterfalls.

---

Kate Kearns is the author of You Are Ruining My Loneliness (Littoral Books, 2023) and How to Love an Introvert (Finishing Line Press, 2015). Kate’s work has appeared in Maine Women Magazine, the Maine Sunday Telegram “Deep Waters” section and Maine Public’s “Poems from Here”. Her poems have also been published in Salamander, Peregrine, Northern New England Review, Sugar House Review and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Lesley University. Learn more at www.katekearns.com.

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Claire Tang

Pushing Up Daisies

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Claire Tang is a high school writer from Princeton, New Jersey. An Iowa Young Writers' Studio alumni, her work has been recognized by The New York Times, Goi International Peace Foundation, the Garden State Scholastic Press Association, and received a Scholastic National Gold Medal in Short Story. When she is not writing, she can be found playing the trombone, taking a long walk, and experimenting with cookie recipes.

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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.

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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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