Poetry by Ellen Austin-Li

     Dane CC




Brother 

John Austin is fearless, Darryl Leech says 
from the bleachers one row ahead, Friday night lights 

blazing over the Red Rams' home field, He’ll tackle anything.
Dragged to another of my older brother’s games, his godlike

status grew with shoulder pads and helmet, lined up 
with the other young gladiators for the next play, their breath

briefly enshrined in billows of steam in the chill fall air.
Brother three years older is a chasm in a family of six 

born in an eight-year span. My brother was untouchable. 
My first day at the same high school, his friends christened me

“Little Austin.” Then, the cool group of my freshman peers—cheer-
leaders and handsome jocks—made overtures, invited me 

to their parties. That I didn't go spoke more about my fear
than his legacy. He must have promoted me, a silent oath

of fealty, of brotherly love. The undercurrent I’d never noticed
I was swept into—a creek joining a river. The night he was rendered

unconscious by a lead pipe as he tried to stop a fight,
his best friend carrying him home, I remember the tumult inside 

when I saw his limp body, the rise of this visceral churn in my belly 
like when I drive by a deer gutted on the shoulder

of the road. After my car crash, as I lay spleenless & concussed
in the hospital, one sister said my only relief came

when I heard John was hitchhiking home from college 
to see me. So long ago, the wellspring of our mythology, 

the kind of love that just was between my brother and me.
A lifetime away, that distant field I see. I miss everything.

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Ellen Austin-Li’s work has appeared in Artemis, Thimble Literary, The Maine Review, Salamander, Rust + Moth, and other places. A Best of the Net nominee, she’s published two chapbooks with Finishing Line Press: Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Solstice Creative Writing Program. Ellen lives with her husband in a newly empty nest in Cincinnati, Ohio. Find her work @ www.ellenaustinli.me.