Fibs for a Construction Zone
by Maryann Corbett
Pavement marking code: blue for water, red for power, yellow for gas,
green for sewerEyes
down:
Sidewalks
gone dotty,
dashes in spray paint
morsecoding streets kiddy-colored—Can’t
chalk
this up
to child’s play.
It’s the guide to where
all our digging at past troubleslays
bare
wired-up
brokenness.
Old stinks we’d let lie.
Grown-ups’ muddled entanglements—Road,
work:
Tamp them
down again.
Slather gravel’s gray
poultice over these ragged wounds.Re-
draw
days in
hopscotch. Dot
them with tricycles
left on walks in summer twilight.
The fib is a six-line, 20-syllable poem based on the mathematical concept known as the Fibonacci sequence.
About the Author:
Maryann Corbett is the author of three books of poetry and two chapbooks. Her most recent book, Mid Evil, won the Richard Wilbur Award and will be published by The Evansville Press later this year. Her work has appeared in a range of anthologies from the randy Hot Sonnets to the reverent Imago Dei, and in a like range of journals including both Christianity and Literature and The Shit Creek Review. Recent work appears in Barrow Street and Southwest Review and is forthcoming in Rattle and Asheville Poetry Review, among others. Her web site is at maryanncorbett.com.
