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Debt Ritual: Muskrat Lodge






this is a small poem
for the muskrat lodge
made of reed
and the fox tracks
frozen into the slush-ice
for the way
being outside
these months
shows
the temporary
natures of structures
of course
the interior
is only a
spatial metaphor
for temporal
engagement
everyone
was everywhere
all along
making with
what was
close at hand



Katie Naughton is a doctoral candidate in the Poetics program at SUNY - Buffalo and holds an MFA in creative writing from Colorado State University. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in jubilat, Michigan Quarterly Review, Reality Beach, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. She is at work on two collections of poems, “Hour Song,” which was a finalist for the 2021 Nightboat Poetry Prize under the title “the real ethereal,” and “Debt Ritual.” A chapbook, Study, is forthcoming from Above/Ground press in 2021. She is the publicity editor for Essay Press and founder of Etcetera, a web journal of reading recommendations from poets (launching spring 2021).