Kiki Petrosino

photograph of a cabin in snowy woods, the photo seems to be taken through the trees

Complicating the Domestic

In this moment, it’s difficult to view any domestic arrangement without its undercurrent of uncertainty or instability. Two poems written in a fairy-tale register—Jane Hirshfield’s “Amor Fati” and Kiki Petrosino’s “Nursery”—capture this sense of pervasive menace, and complicate the idea of home as the ultimate refuge from a threatening outside world.