Dispirited

No more spirits
warming me from the inside,
courage in a jewel-colored bottle
seducing me with elegant charm.
Villain cloaked in convivial company,
you beguiled me with warm laughter
and your rich voice.
I know how you exploited
my dreamy eyes and my wistful heart ––
you promised me the mystique of a beautiful woman,
you clothed me in bravado.
You knew I would love you,
that I would wrap my legs around your neck.
The memory of you sometimes sparkles,
scent of warm red oak fills my nose,
your beaded sweat beckons,
tinkling ice in crystal captures
warm amber embraces,
nostalgia for the love affair
of wild abandon dances.
But my spirit now comes
from a deeper well ––
my hands grasp cool stone,
I lift fresh rejuvenating water
to my lips.
– Ellen Austin-Li

Ellen Austin-Li‘s work appears in many journals and anthologies. Finishing Line Press published her poetry collections, Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). Ellen holds an MFA in poetry and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I was driving the 1950 Chevy heading west
to California from Ohio when you grabbed the wheel
and steered us off the Interstate onto an exit toward
a town not on the agenda I had so carefully drawn,
not knowing –– since we were still newlyweds –– how
nothing pleased you more than spur-of the-moment.
There was only so much uprooting I could endure ––
never having lived anywhere but my Midwest home ––
while you coaxed me toward Berkeley.

Taking the plan, the mapping, the wheel away
was a final straw. The ancient car and the U-Haul trailer
slid to a shady curb in downtown Wilson, Kansas.
An argument about your tone of voice, the way
you never follow the plan spiraled out of control,
fueled by my fear of leaving everything, stoked
by your disappointment I couldn’t go with the flow,
hurt that I couldn’t hear your desire to share this
little surprise of a town with me. The ease and speed
with which you proposed a solution shocked.

You said I could take a Greyhound back to Ohio.
We’d split up our stuff, what I couldn’t fit in luggage,
I could mail home, you’d take the stereo and albums,
your books and drive with the dog to Berkley.
The mention of Sam slowed us down. We turned
to the back seat where our black lab sat watching,
his heard between us, brown eyes steady, mouth poised
to drop his tongue to one side in the summer heat.

Here was the honest truth: Neither of us was willing
to give him up. We lifted the cooler lid, popped open
a Coors, made sandwiches, let Sam water the trees,
got back in the Chevy and continued moving West.
– Kathy Wade

Kathy Wade’s poetry has been published in various journals related to the teaching of writing, as well as Shelter in This Place: Meditations on 2020. For two years, she was Poet Laureate for her Cincinnati neighborhood of Walnut Hills. She published her novel Perfection in 2018. Her first collection of poetry, Every Now Is A Yes, was published this year.