Pavement
- Pavement
Arlington, Virginia
Asphalt, bituminous, concrete, cement—the whole place is case-hardened, carapaced.The air shimmers with heat; tree roots can't breathe;no poured libation seeps down to the dead.
When we were children, this was open ground,farm field once, where we scraped and scrounged, intenton grubbing up that other world, the past.Old wounds—the Minié ball, the arrowhead—
spat blood here. Now the grimy runoff seethesinto the storm drain from the parking lot.This is the way we cloak our own unease,muzzling what the cracked clay might have said.
The pavement lies tight-lipped, impenitent.The scabrous memory writhes here, underneath. [End Page 48]
maryann corbett lives in Saint Paul and spent thirty-five years working for the Minnesota Legislature. She's the author of five books of poetry, most recently In Code. Her work appears in journals on both sides of the Atlantic and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2018. New work appears in LIGHT, Mezzo Cammin, Modern Age, and the Raintown Review and is forthcoming in SWWIM Every Day and THINK.
