Ellen Austin-Li: Blushing & Rising

Blushing

The kaleidoscope spins shards of shifting glass,
and I emerge wearing this hot pink sweat-
shirt with zippers. Come inside where it’s wet
and I’m alive, fire eyes. Or is it a flash
that stokes this slow burn turned masterclass
on how many petals I must pluck to get:
He loves me not. The world wants me to forget
how to be soft, how to open—perhaps
that I have a body. Your need, my want.
We’ll meet in the meadow where I wait
in the wildflowers, lips laced with honeybees,
sweet clover on my breath. Come, love—savant,
word-weaver. Let me spin one last web. Taste
the same hues I have looked through. Copied.

Rising

The same hues I have looked through, copied,
because I sit here so, waiting, watching
late February trees turning green, need
reawakened in my body. So I sing
an old melody out loud, a moment freed
from knowing the crows and their dark wings
fold as their murder gathers, a tight string
stretched around my childhood home; their greed

grows, the branches brought low, a split bough—
these metaphors for a felled me until
there’s a chemo pause, and my brother goes down-
hill skiing, my sister’s voice sounds strong. How
wrong to blame the birds, desert this day. Still,
patterns turn in my hand. See me walk now.

~~~~

Copyright 2027. From a heroic crown of sonnets, The Fourth Column, to be published  2027 with Milk & Cake Press.

Note: The phrase ‘because I sit here so‘ is a quotation from Laura Riding Jackson.

Ellen Austin-Li’s 2025 debut poetry collection, Incidental Pollen was published by Madville. Ellen received a 2026 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and Sundress Academy for the Arts supported her work with a 2024 residency. She curates Poetry at Artifact in Cincinnati, where she lives.