Honest Ulsterman - Poetry - Green Jadeite Mug by Erin Wilson

June 2026

poetry

Green Jadeite Mug

by Erin Wilson

Fragments, a frame of fractals, little twists in chaos,
hyphens, Hopkins, Eliot, elegant glitches, elegance, Bach,

barn-bright sunlight pouring through a church-like high kitchen window,
loaves of bread cooling in a bannock basket,

an orange tabby cat jumping from a swathe of curtain
nail-caught to cascade over the back of a bench in the hall

(the cat, by and large, boasting obtuseness),
bench-side -- worsted slippers.

There's the goat's milk soap in an ironstone saucer,
a bulb of garlic, a gingham towel.

If I am an amnesiac, and I well might be
(don't ask me to quote anyone),

something of my cellular structure recognizes its slippage
and therefore remembers,

the coffee is on the top shelf in the sink-left cabinet,
the butter knife holds the broken door closed.

Redeem time.

Erin Wilson

Erin Wilson is from an island community of a couple hundred people. Her poems have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, takahē magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Channel Magazine, The North, B O D Y, 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 on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory, in Northern Ontario, Canada, the traditional lands of the Anishnawbek. She is most at home amongst trees. She refuses to carry a cell phone.

More work by Erin Wilson

After Blind River [poetry] Escaping into Glenn Gould [poetry] Delivering a Birthday Cake to My Daughter in a Distant City, I Listen to Thomas Quasthoff Perform “Der Leiermann” from Winterreise [poetry]

Poetry

Plath Adjacent
Fionnbharr Rodgers

Prose

The Egg that Split
Jessica Grene

1968 - 2026

Tel: 028 7126 6946
Email: hueditor@theverbal.co

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