In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.

Fog Has No Memory

for being anything but gray
and soft as a mohair muffler

wound around the neck and shoulders.
It gives a slight itch to the skin

under the chin. It begins to think
about things it cannot pronounce

or define. Haziness is just
a lazy way to ease into

another day. Past particles
of dust or smoke or smog also

clog the memory, like a drain.
Irony lies within its

silvery lining, dull outer
garmets of lead. What is slated

for the ash-heaps instead cannot
be overstated. That the sun

has a way to remember helps
us to slip out of this gestalt

of pepper and salt and into
this stark and brilliantly lit day.

—
Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places (including the United Kingdom and Japan) but now calls North Carolina home. An AWP Intro Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Floribunda and three chapbooks: No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and Bogbound. When not writing or reading or editing BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, she is training for running road races, or practicing yoga, while sharing a house with her husband, six housecats, and a backyard full of birds.

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