Maryann Corbett

A DISAPPEARANCE

October 2025

Barely as noticeable as the sunrise that edges
southward by inches, the earlier dark,

Hardly perceived, like the just-scented tang of a chimney’s
sweet-bitter woodsmoke, testing the chill,

Substanceless as the horizon obscured by these maples
fading against matte pewter of sky,

Slight as the web of an orb-weaver torn from the fencepost,
tattered, trailing its silks in the wind:

Silences. Gone from the dusk, the susurrus of crickets,
and gone from the rooftops on still afternoons

are nail guns, and clamor in Spanish, and Mexican radio music.

Maryann Corbett is the author of six books of poetry. Her work has appeared in the UK in the New Statesman, PN Review, and The Dark Horse, among others, as well as in many US publications including The Best American Poetry 2018. Her poems have won the Richard Wilbur Award and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.

Here is Maryann’s comment about her poem:

When this poem was written, in the fall of 2025, detentions and deportations by ICE in American cities were just ramping up. Inspired by the form of a Michael Donaghy poem, I wrote about the disappearance of roofing workers who were being seized on the job. As everyone knows who reads the news, at this writing--in January 2026--these seizures are often much louder and more violent, and the resistance to them is energetic, noisy, and done at great risk--especially in my own Twin Cities of Minnesota.