Kate Northrop

The Murderer

When he enters the room,
	the walls darken,

just slightly, and a cloud
covers the lake. But nobody notices. The party's
already started

and our hosts, dreamlike, serve up the last
	of the summer cocktails

to gorgeous guests. Outside,
floating across the terrace, white petals. A yacht
slides by. The murderer

is touching the cream pitcher. He circles
through conversations, then he is turning over
	his silver:

the salad fork, just once, the spoon. His hands
move exactly--cool, detached

like the light slanting lower across the lawn. Slowly,
	in October,

the body will surface, the body
will reveal itself

and though nobody knows yet, some women,
after the capture, will say I could tell something
was different. I just kind of sensed it

but that's not true. Only the walls
knew he was sliding among us,
a secret celebrity, and trailing after him

drama, romance, disease.

---

Kate Northrop is an assistant professor of English/Creative Writing at West Chester University and has received a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her first full length collection, Back Through Interruption, was awarded the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and was published in September 2002 by Kent State University Press. contents | previous | next