Two Poems by Erin Wilson
The Brickworks
i.
I am compelled to hold this egg.
I am compelled to break it.
I let it flow
to make
the shape
of this room.
What is created
is inside.
I want to remain
inside.
I want the whole world
to be
an act
of creation.
I must
at all costs
remain inside.
ii.
There is a river
that runs just beyond
the border
of this property.
It tears at me
as though hot wax
wrests
a hairless strip
down the entirety
of my animal body.
You run your finger along the naked strip
and whisper words like
lanugo — gone —
iii.
My mind
is a little garland
of sparrows in flight,
knot of my knot,
ouroboros thinkingheart.
It makes me cry,
how innocent it is,
how vulnerable,
how potentially pretty.
But if you raise your voice
to threaten it—
gums and teeth,
a stealthy spitting slur that will destroy.
iv.
The whistle blows.
Something burdensome
lunges forth,
approaches
the broiler.
Workers
try to
catch
glimpses of their
faces
in rows of windows.
They don’t know why
they hurl their eggs.
With a libidinous tongue,
I lick clear the windows.
The Crystal Chrysanthemum
Whatever that air bubble is
that moves inside of you,
vacillating in you — the calyx,
between the layers
and various incarnations of you,
betwixt the clashing of internal voices,
that
seed of water, that
pure bead, that
singular indomitable jewel,
that soul that soul,
it longs for moments to sit alone
with itself,
it requires
eons of silence,
empty nights of hill after hill after hill and hillock,
for it is a dollop of eternity
caged in time and fur and fragrance,
lowing for its homelessness
which is everywhere
and always.
About the Author:
Erin Wilson’s poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming in, Salamander Magazine, Crab Creek Review, takahē, The Prairie Journal, A Magazine of Canadian Literature, Pembroke Magazine, Hamilton Stone Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, The Honest Ulsterman, and elsewhere. Her first collection is At Home with Disquiet, published by Circling Rivers Press. She lives and writes in a small town in northern Ontario, Canada.
Image: Ziva & Amir: Sparrows in flight over rocks in a seaside in Jaffa Tel Aviv, Israel (CC)
