Authors /
Steven Peterson
Steven Peterson is a poet and playwright living in Chicago.
Cat and mouse and me
My cat, who’s kept inside all day, got bored, somehow slipped into my attached garage, cornered and caught a little mouse, and gored ...
Apocalypse is beautiful
Apocalypse is beautiful when seen from far away. Our latest telescope retells a distant disarray: ...
Waiting in line for communion
You stand. You do not shuffle, taking strides whenever gaps before you open up....
Foreign studies
Twenty-six jet-lagged college studentsarrive in Freiburg, Germany,starting their semester abroad.On their first day they tour the Altstadtunder a low, cold winter sun....
Hipshot & Tom
Sunday morning, 1965.
I’m ten, Tom’s eight.
Comics are in color
in the Sunday Chicago Tribune.
Church is starting soon
but Tom says he won’t go....
Church going online
Altar bare.
No one’s there.
It’s unused.
Where the Word
once was heard:
empty pews.
It lies dark
and was marked
unessential....
Dutch windows
Walking through Hoofddorp in the evening dusk
I pass a row of houses, brick and square,
each with a large plate-glass window exposing
a neat and tidy living room inside....
Elegy for eulogies
Sometimes we were surprised
or not
but always we felt bad
to hear
there’ll be no funeral
no kind
of memorial service
no way...
God’s own language
The Hindi service is at nine o’clock,
the Gujarati is at ten. I pick
the later one so when it’s done I’ll stick
around when people have the time to talk....
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Prayer as weather moves in
Our house looks out upon a lake
facing northwest some fifty miles
southeast of Lake Superior....
Ghost light
We’ve closed our theatres—a silence rules.
Homebound with Internet and iPhones, stocked...