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Death-Joy, A Poem of Breath
“What else to say? We end in joy.”
— Theodore Roethke
Bitter cold, November
after considering the ancients at the National Museum of Tokyo
fuck yeah
black shingled rooftops
and a sudden burst of thunder
fuck yeah
running shoes and one more day
of half-broken/half-able body
fuck yeah
white pine pressing a bruised sky
fuck yeah
a secret iridescence of lichens and mosses
fuck yeah
aesthetics of hail
oh fuck yeah
big. fucking. ballocks. of hail
fuck yeah
tunnel of cedar
calligraphy of green air and mind
fuck yeah
hail collecting in shadows
fuck yeah
hail evanescing in the river
fuck yeah
cool mist rising, the world a haunting
fuck yeah
an auburn thatch of cedar needles
tracing the black water current
fuck yeah
a fallen tree, shore to shore
ensnaring those needles
fuck yeah
wearing hail like a windrow!
fuck yeah
a rock in my shoe
fuck yeah
stopping to empty it
fuck yeah
popping a hailstone to my mouth
fuck yeah
in the distance—wood smoke
Erin Wilson is from an island community of a couple hundred people. She writes from outside of academia, from a rural environment, and from the working class. Her poems have appeared in EVENT, The North, The Honest Ulsterman, Channel, SAND, Cordite Poetry Review, B O D Y, Verse Daily, and elsewhere internationally. Her first collection is At Home with Disquiet; her second, Blue (whose title poem won a Pushcart), is about depression, grief, and the transformative power of art. Last year her chapbook was highly commended by the Munster Literature Centre. The editor/writer Roger Mitchell once said of her writing, ‘Erin Wilson’s poems read as though Emily Dickinson’s secret love child ran off to Canada and mated with a wolf’. She lives in a small town on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory in Northern Ontario, Canada, the traditional lands of the Anishnawbek. Some of her best friends are trees. She refuses to carry a cell phone.
Copyright © 2025 by Erin Wilson, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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