Young Suh, Orange Sky, 2023

FOG

Katie Peterson

It was made of water, but not helpfully,
a stag walked inside. It was a voice
on the radio, a voiceover,
telling us about the technical difficulties
making the funeral hard to hear
at the moment when the great man’s death
became a family matter.

A stag became concealed
at the moment a car turned the corner.
It required the driver
to do more than pay attention.
One must be slow in advance
of what’s coming.

The funeral came back with music.
A song about what could last.

It stayed the same, hanging
around the house
like a lovesick teenager,
or a grownup with nothing to do,
or curtains, or sirens, anything
with duration that acts permanent.

Fog and Smoke

Poems
By Katie Peterson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN  9780374610890

To Be Released on 01-02-2024

Peterson unfurls the quotidian fabric of our lives, patterned with the difficulties of language and this moment.