TESS RITCHIE
Does The Painting Have A Name?
We three marks in the centre see you, we three marks in the centre battle
the white on white paint, the quiet on quiet, we saints shake in here, shake
in the blizzard paint, pinned to the walk into the white, three of us looking
for shelter, light. We freeze in here, we can’t see in the white and what else
is out here in the sticks? A ditch filled with coconut ice, six-arm crystals.
We three saints the only glitches in the spotless, sunless, peopleless place
we three black licks flicked into existence for the thinkers. Thought into
meaning, turning marks into sense, a semblance of something essential
you say. Not just strokes, strokes on strokes. We see you scraping. Shaking.
And falling from the corner a small dog, you say. Hey, what’s with the dog
did you see it? Melting out from the white, snowflakes turning from white
a black dog. We three marks see you, by which we mean are you. We are
you, we see the dog, we painted him in subliminal desire. From nothing
we bring the guard, the safety, the ferocious chaser to the right. Now start
on the red flecks in the corner. What will you make of those? Berry stains
on a frozen plain. And what will you make of yourself? Your scars under light.
Ground
I open myself in trouble
in the sky above the cafe why I keep waking like this I
don’t know I just crave lines that line up to be weighted
down make sense there’s just so much air
I crave
so I take the closest thing a crayon on the bedside table
and I hold onto it no I grab it in my fist of feathers
fighting my fist of feathers I tighter
push the oily orange stick across my thigh and colour
in my limbs with other limbs with crayon thick
press harder make heavy rough lines to the edges no gaps please
I am almost crayon
I’m filling in my body solid
’til I’m body hot again: I grab my thighs
I dig my fingers into my skin
I walk downstairs, outside, find the nearest
park and sit on fat earth.
I plant my fingers through dew, grass
my nails fill with dirt
find a staunch of elm roots
curved and horn-like, a handle to ground.
Summer’s End
On the drive toward mine, heading down Alexandra Parade
the day starts to tighten, pressing like an over-filled balloon.
Summer storms make sense: the heat needs to be replaced
but always come out of nowhere; no time to rearrange.
When the air pressure meets its limit, and no sooner –
rain. Big drops decorate the windscreen, arriving
like forewarning and also necessity – the two all mixed
up in each other, like when I flung that shoe across the room.
Not harmony, but the feeling something should be faced.
We needed rain. The heat was too close on Alexandra Parade.
In electric reds and greens, the city blurs. In here, it’s a vacuum.
No talking. Hot skin. I did not predict a storm before driving.
Next, it goes black. The sky cuts out, and as quick as a blade
violet lightning. In one second of UV I see our future bloom
and shrink back. Us, elided in a second. I brace for the delayed
deep echo to roll through, as heavy presence down the Parade
not asking what is happening because I know. I’m alone
now, and so is he. Even though, technically, he’s just driving
me home. We park, the atmosphere completely replaced.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tess Ritchie is from Ōtepoti Dunedin and lives in Naarm/Melbourne. She has poetry in Sweet Mammalian and Landfall, and forthcoming in Australian Poetry Journal and Rabbit Poetry. Ritchie is the winner of the 2024 Biggs Family Prize in Poetry.