Loretta Riach
Labora et Amare
get up to your elbows in work, other people’s dishes, art,
fortunes, rich inner lives, current affairs of the heart
and anything that produces forward momentum,
study the pads of your fingers, your worry coming in,
look out for other animals at night, points of comparison,
a familiar face, if you’re there that’s all that matters,
don’t let go of anything that pays, breathes, gives you
anything at all to eat or dance to, meets any ends,
it’s natural selection so just hold your nerve,
assess the probability, the rising of particles, plastic, stakes,
love or carbon dioxide, all calving from the ice front to
reveal perfectly preserved fantasies, endless tusks
under the weight of increasing sediment, pressure from all sides,
hand yourself over to cycles of erosion, it can only be good
to get home late and feel in your body the effort you expended
in service of others, sleep alone and dream often of labour,
clock in again, the one where the car won’t stop, thought-fox
ripping through the bins, many hands pushing the stone,
put your back into the carrying, count backwards from
the expiration, towards the sound of running water,
day by day nothing appears to change, still the work is done.
PEANUT BUTTER BY EILEEN MYLES BY LORETTA RIACH
I keep reading the wrong person
Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles. I must have
fundamentally misunderstood the ending;
I keep taking the destination
before the ride. It must have been a trick
of the light; I keep seeing futures
where there are only
other people’s past lives. I must always
be close to a body of water,
my body like my mind
only making sense
when it touches nothing else.
It keeps me up,
that I might look the wrong way
and miss the very good parts of my life,
and you know I could have sworn
it would be you
that I was missing. I must know
what is on the other side of longing,
must write because I long
to be wildly misinterpreted
by many people at once.
It kept occurring to me while you spoke
that this was only the beginning.
It must get worse before it gets better,
and it is summer, unnaturally,
and you are not here. I keep a list
of words as they come to me:
Jacaranda. Emergency opening.
Devastation. I must do something
with all of this writing,
the words move faster than I can write
and fill the spaces you took up
before I get the chance to have memorised
your outline,
drawn out against the days.
I keep forgetting to not love you,
my thoughts about you
not exactly forbidden,
but useless because they are exalted,
not getting you any closer
because I have already lost the thread
that made you real to me.
I must retrace my steps
until I get back to the beginning,
taking the path
that leads not to you or anyone else,
just the sun in my eyes, enough
time for anything, a love
that grows warmer
and warmer, and another day
just like the last,
with no way of knowing
where it ends.
Blue Babe
I crawled out of the permafrost looking for love
Knowing nothing, sensing through the massive ice
the world at large hissing its names
I heard the economic rifts & sailing
vessels of great meaning, modern crises, your singing
always in the back of my mind
forget the dead you’ve left
they will not follow you
Nothing is permanent
The black summers of an Ice Age, all my life
suspended & released over again like fern spores
to a sweet & steaming earth
Whatever killed me first was not stubborn enough
so I waited
& warmth came to me, hydraulics & gold teeth
gritted against the scuff
of millennia, vivianite
a brilliant blue like a clear day in Alaska, 1979
I was alive, & I knew I’d seen your face before
Loretta Riach is a Pākehā artist and writer from Aotearoa, living in Naarm. Much of their work is concerned with landscape, solidarity, and ghosts, but they also like to write love poems. This writing can be found in previous issues of Starling, as well as publications including Sick Leave, Sweet Mammalian, The Spinoff, Min-a-rets, Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, and Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook. More of their art can be found on their website. They love geology, swimming in rivers, and telling stories.