SEEING DEFIBRILLATORS, AFTER
Like roadside shrines,
they brood in liminal spaces,
bloodied with scarlet kindergarten hearts,
lightning-impaled. In glass-and-metal cases.
Alive as mines.
What are the odds,
they hiss, of keeling over?
Of strangers witching over you, in arts
of shock and awe? Your breast bared, like a lover
rapt by rough gods?
Maryann Corbett lives in St. Paul and works for the Minnesota Legislature. Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared widely online and in print in many journals and assorted anthologies and have won the Lyric Memorial Award, the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, and the Richard Wilbur Award. New work appears in Angle, Barrow Street, Kin, Raintown Review, and Southwest Review as well as Measure and Mezzo Cammin. Her books are Breath Control (David Robert Books), Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter (Able Muse), and Mid Evil (The Evansville Press).
823 on High 