ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Erin Wilson’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in On the Seawall, Atlanta Review, Sugar House Review, Lake Effect, The Fiddlehead, Dalhousie Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere internationally. The title poem from her collection, Blue, won a Pushcart. Her work will appear in Best Canadian Poetry 2026, and she won a Silver Medal with the National Magazine Awards in Canada. She lives in a small town on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory, in Northern Ontario, Canada, the traditional lands of the Anishnawbek, devoted to a handful of things, all of them poetry. Some of her best friends are trees. She refuses to carry a cell phone.
November 5, 2025
Surrender
As an antidote to darkness,
a gatekeeper let the light in.
Then I could see you,
middle-aged lover,
hopeful page,
sad camel.
You carried
a satchel
stuffed with frayed foolscap
and frantic bees.
And your sorrows
carried you,
the bright ember
burnt onto the forehead
of a white ox.
We met at the intersection
of frost and fruit.
Dew, otherwise
known as surrender,
split
from your skin.
That salty dew,
hallelujah,
is still
splitting from you.
I awoke to literature with and through my lover (now second husband). For me, neither he nor poetry could exist without the other. Nor could we have been married (lovers) without the presence and transformative power of literature. It’s the gate to the temple and the temple is where I long (and need) to be. While writing this poem, I had Issa’s dew (death) poem in mind. It is often in mind. Dew in all its varied forms.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
