A poem by Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich which appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Forum.
Eris Reads The Star Poetry Elizabeth V. Aldrich
“Obsession is a form of observation that becomes infected.” -Luisa Valenzuela
When I go crazy, I go in all directions. I lick glitter slick as glass, let lights tremble over the sacrificed stage. Smog unhooks every star, silver egg still intact. Smoldering violet is what I claim, a war of almosts and underneaths, of darkness and neon rain, of sugar-spiked liquor and bars exhuming the rimfire sweat of tight-rope nymphettes. I rise like flames of well-licked kerosene, trains derailing into orbit. Girls like me melt into alumina, girls like me learn to lie with powder silk and push-up bras. Girls like me stop at nothing. The bullet shrieks– Hysssssteria! We fly like corks freed! from blonde champagne and paper money out the window. We are the snakes that writhe, that coil around grenadine-soaked tongues and, in confession, are more likely to ask where when why than to laugh in the face of smooth-shaven re-demp-tion. Cadillacs promise us to crash in brilliance and bone. Our pale savior plays our song backward but the static fuzz of blackbox television is knee-weak under our teeth, begging for filth. We are beautiful and corrupt, cathedrals painted black. Melodies of shipwrecks & sunken diamond carousels, a language of disorder, of dance, of chandeliers that ache to pivot as pendulums do, as wandering crystals flow in darkness flirting until the light & I dance dance dance: in our own kind of swing, in our own kind of sweat, in our own kind of blues, in the myths of what excesses we are known to crave, sugar blood and fire, inside, not out. A waxing-manic dollhouse painted red, red, red through millions of pebbled beads, thick as the plush guts of a pomegranate and the myths with our names. Girls like me belong to no one, deserts have been born from our throats. I am the pearl swathed in spit, too tart for the oyster– restless–I am not fit.
A tribute by Ayo Khensu-Ra
It’s good to return to the virtual pages of Forum but I wish it weren’t for this reason. On July 11th, on what seemed an ordinary Monday evening, I checked Twitter, and one of the first things I saw, and practically the only thing that seemed to matter that night was a tweet from Expat Press with the news that Elizabeth Aldrich had died. I was gutted. I won’t say Lizzie was my best friend or that I was hers but in 2022 we’d gotten in touch for the first time since 2014 and made up for some lost time. Our relationship was in some ways a strange one, a stop-start one that somehow ended in deep affection.
Elizabeth V. Aldrich, Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich, E.V.A., Lizzie, Eris—she had a lot of names and seemed to use them all in various combinations (that she was known as Eris may affect your reading of “Eris Reads The Star” as it did mine). I first knew her through “Eris Reads The Star” when I co-edited poetry with Kaylo X. for Forum in spring of 2012. As is the way with these things I only knew Lizzie by her name, by her words. Her poem was one that clearly stood out that semester—it had a distinct voice, an assuredness that we didn’t always see in submissions, as if this was a writer who on some level already knew who she was. Naturally, we accepted it. Even then, I think I wondered who this person (with her equally distinct name) was, I wouldn’t have imagined ten years later I would venture to attempt to describe her, couldn’t have imagined how devastated I would be to learn that she was gone.
She came to the launch reading for that issue and read but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I emailed her tentatively after the semester and we quickly hit it off, Lizzie suggesting we meet up and write, something that never happened for whatever reason and after that we lost touch. But we remembered each other, finding each other twice more years later. I was surprised each time that she gave a damn, that that affection was there: part of that was surely her—her openness to others, to other writers, to other weirdos.
Lizzie was a prolific tweeter, was (self-admittedly) crazy and wickedly funny, very intelligent, and immensely kind. The words of her literary community online speak of her as supportive and empathetic, speak of her as always finding the good things in someone else’s work. After her time in the Bay Area, she returned to Los Angeles where she was from. Many of her pieces were published in various outlets in the following years. In 2020 her novel Ruthless Little Things was published by Expat—though calling it a novel doesn’t paint the full picture: its point of view shifts constantly, we’re given different characters and settings, parts of it are poetry, parts read like notes, like fascinating stray thoughts; it’s passionate and sad, contemplative and unflinching and like its author, not any one thing. The various stories in the book are those of young women, are stories of fast lives, drugs and sex, particularly female sexuality, a subject she was always frank about in and outside of her writing. That she wrote of those things was not out of any desire to sensationalize but out of authenticity—they were simply part of who she was.
Lizzie lived much of her life in LA—specifically the San Fernando Valley—and wrote of LA but I don’t think she felt like she really fit in LA. Part of what makes her death so difficult to process is that she seemed ready to start a new chapter in her life—she very much wanted to get out of the valley and she loved San Francisco and very much wanted to move back to the Bay Area but never got the chance. Lizzie was only 29, it’s hard not to think of all the things she never got a chance to do, it’s hard not to think of the things she might’ve written or the friendships or loves she might’ve had, it’s hard not to think of the difficulties she might’ve been able to get beyond, of the happiness she might’ve had.
And, of course, she wasn’t perfect, she had her struggles which could’ve made her bitter or mean but she simply wasn’t. In an interview/discussion with another Eris, she said something which might explain this:
“Anyone who belittles someone else, it’s like, it’s because they’re not doing everything they think they can with their own life. I have this tattoo “envy” on my wrist because I wanted a reminder to do everything I want to do in life so I don’t become a bitter, envious person.”
I don’t know if Lizzie did everything she wanted but she certainly did a lot—she left behind a ton of work, and I think her words will be around for a long time; her interests were incredibly varied…I think she lived without being afraid to do what she wanted, I think she lived as who she was, as genuinely herself. But maybe the best measure of someone’s life is how they affect others. Lizzie had a kind and tender heart and the outpouring of love for her that’s come since the news of her passing is testament to that. I loved her too and I’d like to think that’s what she left behind more than anything else, love.