FOUND POEM OF WAR

by Ellen Austin-Li

Newborn twin brothers sleep in a basement used as a bomb shelter at the Okhmadet children's hospital in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A line from Yeats’ poem that reverberates

like a bass chord that becomes a strum,

combined with an image of babies 

kept alive in a bomb shelter, underground,

each breath bagged by ambu into tiny lungs.

This hum an undercurrent—under, under, under

my thumb. This rough beast lumbering, a ton,

a hundred years running, but truly thousands before, 

more’s the sum of history in a new poem—not new, 

but old. What crumbling humans, such endless war.

My hands weary as if I’m delivering each breath.

I know what this means—we cannot take a rest

or the children expire. I tire, but the poem is found.

The cannon, the fodder: explosions of sound. 

Ellen Austin-Li’s work has appeared in Artemis, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Maine Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Rust + Moth, and other places. Her two chapbooks were published by Finishing Line Press—Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). She is a Best of the Net nominee. A recipient of the Martin B. Bernstein Fellowship, she earned an MFA in Poetry at the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen lives with her husband in a newly empty nest in Cincinnati, Ohio.

VENTILATE

by Ellen Austin-Li

"Breathe," a painting by McKayla Smitson.

Father Yaezel hovers on the veil
between this world and the next.
My mother tells me her parish priest
is in the ICU with COVID and his condition
can’t be good, as the local news put out a call
for plasma donors from survivors.
That’s last ditch, my husband says, but I shush
him with my eyes: Please. He’s one of the good ones.

I see Father Yaezel, his full head of snowy hair,
crossing the street from the rectory, walking
up our driveway. I remember him standing,
head bowed, at my father’s bedside, his right hand
signing the cross in mid-air as he recited
Last Rites. My father didn’t die that day —
wouldn’t die — until Father Yaezel held
my mother in his crystal blues a week later
and gently prodded, Did you tell him it was okay to go?

Some nights, a blast of air wakes me from my dreams
and for a moment I think I am on the unit again,
my patient disconnected from the vent — but instead
of the rhythmic breath coming in waves,
the whoosh is continuous. I become aware
I’m in my bedroom, the tubing popped-off
my CPAP machine. I’ve read they try these
on COVID patients to keep them off ventilators.
I open my mouth to feel the rush of pressure
whispering    breathe ...
I sigh and return to sleep.

Ellen Austin-Li is an award-winning poet published in Artemis, Writers Tribe Review, The Maine Review, Mothers Always Write, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Masque & Spectacle, Green Briar Review, Panoply, and other places. Her first poetry chapbook Firefly was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. Ellen is a student at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

THIS IS NOT A SAFE HOUSE

by Ellen Austin-Li

I speak to my son through a wooden door, his bedroom a quarantine zone, Day 12. 

His brilliant smile hides behind a mask. I pine to hold him. I leave his favorite food by the door: Ramen with two eggs, yokes poked open with chopsticks. and a dollop of hot sesame oil, yellow cake with sweetened condensed milk (like NiNi makes), cinnamon tea with honey. One bathroom extends his bunker. I am too afraid to enter to clean. If this is Coronavirus, it’s too late for his brother and so for us all, as he showers there. Sooner or later we’ll all get it—a cavalier cloak covers my husband's fear. He is on the Crisis Airway Team at the hospital. Back in my burn-nurse days, I learned to be strict with gloves, scrubs, gowns, masks. We have broken technique. Don’t you answer the call to work, he said in a naked moment. If I don’t make it, someone has to be alive for the boys. We are broken. Day 12 and my husband finally agrees. We are not a safe house. I text my son about the bag of Cadbury Mini-Eggs I laid on the floor outside his door.

Ellen Austin-Li is an award-winning poet published in Artemis, Writers Tribe Review, The Maine Review, Mothers Always Write, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Masque & Spectacle, Green Briar Review, Panoply, and other places. Her first poetry chapbook Firefly was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. Ellen is a student at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.