Elisavietta Ritchie’s fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, photojournalism, and translations from Russian, French, Malay and Indonesian have appeared in numerous publications including Poetry, American Scholar, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, National Geographic, New York Quarterly, and many others. Her work has appeared in anthologies including Sound & Sense; The 90th Anniversary Poetry Anthology, When I'm An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, and many others including several international anthologies from Lost Tower Books (England) and Prosopisia (India). Ritchie has read at the Library of Congress, Harbourfront, Folger Library, Pittsburgh International Forum, many libraries, universities, schools and other cultural centers in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, and under the auspices of the United States Information Agency, in Brazil, around the Far East, and the Balkans. She teaches writing workshops for adults and children, serves as occasional poet-in-the-schools, and has lectured to teachers on this program.
Winter 2012
Table of Contents - Vol. VIII, No. 4
Poetry Translations Fiction Non-fiction Reviews
Elisavietta Ritchie
One button gone, your shirt
is more intriguing, leaves you
unguarded, even flawed.
Questions arise: how was it lost?
Now we have a plot—love
story, mystery, possibly noir—
a chance to describe not just
the shirt but the wearer
as well as that Other who
can’t or won’t wield a needle.
In certain Far Eastern cultures
perfection affronts the Almighty
Who only is perfect. Therefore
a batik-maker is glad of an odd
dab of wax on her fabric,
a painter leaves one corner blank,
not ignoring the gap, but still
aware of his own imperfection,
the need to strive higher,
the impudence of it. Bless
the leopard with irregular spots,
the asymmetrical ocelot
and the house cat, that creature
considered nearest perfection
but less a threat to the gods
if a tattered ear, crooked tail,
whiskers missing. . . I cannot find thread
or needle to stitch you to perfection.
For Hilary Tham, poet and artist, who had just emailed me her news
1.
What is it about our chests and breasts?
Hearts too full spill secrets, lines on palms
reveal more truths than those we write.
Others analyzed our sonnets, villanelles,
judged our work worthy, or not.
Now they critique our cells and blood.
Poets already take a bad enough rap
for skewing national suicide rates.
No! We struggle like thistles to survive.
Why must we, who would bring light,
face the dark like everyone else?
Aren’t poets supposed immortal?
We were put on earth not only to praise it
or show off our would-be bohemian lives
of sin and song. “A writer’s task,” said Camus,
“is to speak for the silenced, imprisoned
in their souls or lives or literal jails.”
Why silence us in the face of so much need?
2.
This week Doctor Warren probes
my questionable left breast,
presses points of pain, explores not
the way that awkward boy tried—both 15,
both auburn-haired, we skimmed forbidden
manuals but did not reach the final chapter.
Doctor Warren, ace seismologist, tests
my ominous fault zones, dangerous magma
like that churning deep inside volcanoes,
while I lie back, count syllables in my head,
smooth meters and memorize rhymes before
my hard-drive brain crashes, chest explodes.
Doctor Warren offers me hope for the moment.
Yet bards can grow forgetful with age, the most
lyrical flesh dissolves like a poem in a puddle.
So we cling to strands of ink, our webs of form
and content are spider trampolines stretched
between orange tiger lilies and salmon hibiscus.
These bloom for a day then, overnight, their
flamboyant garb shrivels, and like old poets,
petal by petal they drop, and, usefully, rot.
© Elisavietta Ritchie
