Elizabeth Austen: Poems

Elizabeth Austen was commissioned by Hugo House to write a new piece on the theme of Visiting Hours as part of the second event of the 2009-2010 Hugo Literary Series. Austen presented her piece at Visiting Hours on November 20, 2009, alongside novelist Benjamin Parzybok, actor Matt Smith and songwriter Molly Rose.

Leaving the Island

                 Orcas to Anacortes ferry

We carry what we found, what we made there.
Mist-colored knots of sea glass. A moss-clot

cadged from the trail’s edge. The truce
fished word by word from beneath the surface

but still unspoken. Three days you and I
let the currents direct our course, we slept

on cool sand and let woodsmoke flavor us.
What’s left? Slow travel over cold water.

Toward home and days ordered by clocks
instead of tides. We watch through salt-scarred  

windows, hoping the dark shapes will rise
beside us, will grace us. We know too well

what can’t be willed, only missed
if we look away too soon.

Problem Was

Problem was, we lived in a house the size of a subway car, and the problem was it wasn’t just us in there but a dog bred for long runs on the Alaskan tundra and he—the man, my boyfriend—he’d need to fight, to lay it out, all the real ways—I see that now—I’d disappointed him, day after day he’d save it up until the evening—it was always evening in that house—come evening he’d let it spill—all the evidence of my selfishness, immaturity, laziness—the way I never remembered to fill the tank when I borrowed his car, or which shirts went in the dryer—and looking back from here I see how right he was, how small and closedfisted the love I had to offer really was, how incommensurate with his need, or, to be honest, what he, another human being, deserved. We fought over all the normal things—where the money went, sex—always too little, ill-timed or incomplete—who was to blame for that, for letting the dog out. Of course it didn’t help that we’d wait until dark to get down to it, finally worn down past the corral of politeness, each of us a fine, steady abrasion against the other. How could we help it? He hated how I drew the tiny brush of liquid lacquer across each fingernail and I hated how—when traffic in our small city clotted and snarled, it unnerved him—I hated how his timidity reflected my own too accurately—when he wanted me to dress like the hippie girl I’d appeared at first to be and did not yet—you understand—recognize even myself that I was not—when we fought, he would raise his voice, nothing inappropriate you understand, no threat of violence, but the problem was as soon as the simmering tension broke into outright conflict my blood would slow, the weight of my eyelids insupportable, breath shallow, heart rate easing back. Problem was, the more he talked, his litany of needs, the catalog of my flaws, the chronicle of his disappointments—it became a kind of lullaby, soporific, setting me adrift on the tundra, swooning into a stupor, sweet sleep cocooning me from every obvious persistent clue. We were doomed. Livid, he’d shake me awake and sure enough, I’d deny sleeping. I didn’t believe him. Who falls asleep in the middle of an argument? So muddled—you understand—so foreign, even to myself.

The Girl Who Goes Alone

Here’s the thing about being a girl
and wanting to play outside.
All the grownups grind it into you from the get go:
girls outside aren’t safe.
The guy in the car? If he rolls down the window and leans his head out, run,
because the best you can hope for is a catcall, and at worst,
you’ll wind up with your face on the side of a milk carton.  

Even when you’re a grown-up girl, your father—because he loves you—
will send you a four-page article about how to protect yourself
while standing at the ATM, while travelling unescorted, while jogging solo,
an article informing you how to distinguish phony police
and avoid purse snatchers, pickpockets, rapists and thugs.

Tell someone you’re going into the woods alone
and they’ll fill your ears with every story they’ve ever heard
about trailside cougar attacks, cave dwelling misogynists,
lightning strikes, forest fires, flash floods,
and psychopaths with a sixth sense for a woman alone in a tent.

To be a girl alone in the wilderness is to know
that if something goes wrong—
you picked the trailhead where the ax murderer lurks
or the valley of girl-eating gophers—
if you don’t come home unscathed, the mourning
will be mixed with I-told-you-sos
from everyone whose idea of camping involves an RV or a Motel 6.
The message is clear: Girls must be chaperoned.

So when, at the end of the day, you zip up the tent
and lie back in your sleeping bag,
fleece jacket bundled
into a lumpy pillow under your head, the second
you close your eyes every least night noise is instantly magnified.

You lie there and consider the pungent heft of menstrual blood,
how even your sweat is muskier, louder, when you’re bleeding.
Not hard to imagine its animal allure—every bear for miles around
sniffing you on the night wind.

You lie there listening, running a mental inventory of any
potentially scented item—
did every one make it into the food bag hung from a tree?
Toothpaste, trail mix, chapstick, sunscreen—fuck.
Sunscreen still in your pack, nestled right beside you
where Outdoor Man used to sleep. So you’re up, out of the tent,
headlamp casting its too-bright spotlight, darkening the dark outside its reach
as you lower the bag, shove the sunscreen in on top of the trash
with its food wrappers and used tampons. Hoist and tie.

Far enough from the ground to elude the bears?
Far enough out from the branch to thwart raccoons?
Tree far enough from the tent to keep from signaling the proximity
of ground level, girl-shaped snacks?

You go alone—in part—to prove that though Outdoor Man has left you,
his body is the only geography he can deprive you of.
He can give his muscled calves and thighs, his shoulders, chest and hands
to another woman, but not the Sauk River old growth, snow fields of Rainier,
sea stacks of Shi Shi.

He can keep from you the sweet, blood-thrilling hum of his body, but not
the sweaty, blood-thumping-back-aching pleasure of a hard-earned
panoramic view, high altitude starlight or the singular blue of a crevasse.

The thing about being a girl who goes alone, who goes
again and again is that it freaks
the potential next boyfriend. He doesn’t want to be out machoed
and he doesn’t want to admit it and he hopes you can’t tell.
The thing about being the girl who still goes alone is that it proves
you don’t need him and no matter how you show him you want him
it’s not the same
and you both know it.

Zipped back into the tent you remind yourself you’ve never really been in danger.
When have you ever been in danger?  Well there was that boy, but years ago,
a teenager like you, driving around bored and pissed at the world,
his BB gun and his father’s two rifles
and on the seat beside him. Lucky you.
The gun he leveled on the window ledge
lodged nothing more than a BB in your thigh.

The thing about being a girl alone in the woods is you know too much
about the grain of truth in the warnings.  

Even if you seem impervious, weird good luck leaving you so far unscathed,
you know the other girls’ stories—your sister
date raped after a party in college, a friend
raped by a stranger at knife-point, the two women
shot on the Pinnacle Lake trail. The singer
killed by coyotes in Nova Scotia.

The thing
about being a girl
who goes alone
is that you feel like you shouldn’t go
if you’re afraid. If you go it should mean you’re not afraid,
that you’re never afraid. Your friends will think that you go unafraid.

This girl
who goes alone
is always afraid, always negotiating to keep the voices in her head
at a manageable pitch of hysteria.

I go knowing that there will be a moment—maybe long moments, maybe
hours of them, maybe the whole trip—when I curse myself for going alone.
When I lie in the tent and all I am is fear.

I walk in the wilderness alone so I can hear myself.

So I can feel real to myself.

I walk into the wilderness alone
because the animal in me needs to fill her nose with the scent of stone and lichen,
ocean salt and pine forest warming in early sun. I need to feel my body—
taxed and stretched and aching.

I go because I know I’m lucky to have a car, gas money, days off,
the back and legs and appetite
to take me there.
I go because I still can.

The girl who goes alone
claims for herself
the madrona, juniper, daybreak,
she claims hemlock, prairie falcon, nightfall,
nurse log, sea star, glacial moraine,
huckleberry, trillium, salal,
snowmelt, avalanche lily, waterfall,
birdsong, limestone, granite, moonlight, schist,
cirque, saddle, summit, ocean,
she claims the curve of the earth.

The girl who goes alone says with her body
the world is worth the risk.

What Is Known

                               for Michael

the office   my desk   phone
ringing   our mother’s voice   the news
the office   my desk   phone ringing
our mother’s voice
the news in my hand   the office desk
phone ringing  mother’s voice in my hand
the voice in my hand ringing
our mother   her voice   the news
ringing   ringing

***

for weeks before   I heard it   saw it
the premonition   again and again—
office   desk   phone   voice
news     it happened
exactly as I saw it
only one detail wrong—
 you     how could it be you?

* * *

the police report    translated from the Czech
tells us what we already know
you were found alone
in your bathtub     though the newspapers
speculate vražda or sebevražda    the coroner
can tell us nothing—
your body alone in water too long—
translation of cause no longer possible

* * *

what is known—
your name on a can of ashes

* * *

when did our father clip the blond locks
from your head     when did he press
four or five between transparent sheets   below your picture
your ruddy living cheeks    your eyes    focused
on the future    what did he mean
his living children to do   what book could we close you up in

* * *

lying in your bath (was it your heart?)
(when did you start taking baths?)    did you know—
(you knew everything)    did you feel your heart stutter?
before your brain    before it clicked off
(but was it your brain?)    did you know
(did you think of us)    did you
call out     how could we not hear you?  

* * *

who can translate this?

* * *

a single fly    perhaps
pacing the windowsill
disoriented    like you
trapped in a moment
not of your own making
the last sound you registered—
perhaps—
a stirring    of wings