Chiller

Seven a.m. The hunter's moon
a scarface falling down the sky
in knife-edge dark. A siren sounds
its bad suspense film leitmotif.
In porch light on the paving stones,
trench-coated for my working life,
I pull the doorknob (opening scene,
take twenty thousand), turn the key.
The dead hand of a pin-oak leaf
crabwalks across the alleyway.

Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Prize and is published by Able Muse Press. Marilyn Taylor says that it "offers us yet another beautifully crafted group of poems deploying formal technique but linguistically and thematically inventive. Corbett is as comfortable and affecting within the tight confines of the Old English alliterative meter (“Cold Case”) and the Sapphic stanza (“Paint Store”) as she is with her supple blank verse and terza rima. Yet never does her rigorous craft interfere with the thoughtful, insightful content of these poems. A stunning collection, from one of America's most gifted contemporary poets."

If you have any comments on this publication, or questions about it, Maryann Corbett would be pleased to hear from you.