​​This is the truth:
They knife your face,

drag out your entrails
to feed to the crows,

and set the flame
in what remains.

Ecstatic vision.
One night: you shine.

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First published in Snakeskin; in the book Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter.

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Maryann Corbett is the author of six books of poetry. Her work has won the Richard Wilbur Award and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, and her poems, translations, and reviews are published in many journals and included in anthologies like Best American Poetry; Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters; and Contemporary Catholic Poetry. A seventh collection is forthcoming from Slant Books.

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