Poetry by Ellen Austin-Li

Winter Solstice

I.
Dark

One Christmas, my mother gifted me
my childhood silhouette in a silver frame:
a featureless profile in black, set against
a white background. I recognized
the weak chin and the errant curl flipped
below my crown. What better self-portrait
of youth than a faceless one, lips gapped
as an accessory to take in more air?
That little girl was all shadow, swallowed
by the too-brightness around her.
And she had no eyes — nothing to bring in
the light right there in front of her
as she turns away to face the coming
of the longest night. She cannot see
that this darkness precedes rebirth. 
On Winter Solstice, the ancients say
the sun is born. I wish I could cut 
an aperture in my early form, save her
from a lifetime of blindness.

II.
Light

I open the mason jar, switch on
the fairy lights — a string of fireflies
animate as if it’s June and I’m capturing
lightening bugs in the backyard.
I screw on the metal lid and recall
how the real ones flickered, then faded
overnight. I lift this gift from a friend,
unblinking, bold, brilliant: a beacon 
lit from the inside. 
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the sun kicks inside the dark womb of the moon. 

* Italicized line from “Clear Night,” by Charles Wright

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Loss Palindrome

The last time I looked into your eyes
they were pools, unspilled,
deep on a late December night.
Soft yellow light 
threw the living room into shadows,
illuminated the deathbed
of our beloved father.
None of us knew
you would soon follow him
as the great stag passed into the dark.

The sweep of loss

As the great stag passed into the dark
you would soon follow him.
None of us knew.
Our beloved father 
illuminated the deathbed,
threw the living room into shadows,
soft yellow light
deep on a late December night. 
They were pools, unspilled,
the last time I looked into your eyes. 

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Ellen Austin-Li is an award-winning poet published in Artemis, Writers Tribe Review, The Maine Review, Mothers Always Write, Memoir Mixtapes, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Masque & Spectacle, Green Briar Review, Panoply, the Riparian anthology (Dos Madres Press, 2019), and other places. Her first poetry chapbook, Firefly, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. Ellen is active at Women Writing for a Change in Cincinnati and has studied poetry in many workshops. A recipient of the Martin B. Bernstein Fellowship in Poetry, she begins the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program in Winter 2020. Ellen lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband. 

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