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BETH BACHMANN

(sugar)

Destroy it         so the body       can breathe.        I asked

for water          and you let go   the wheel.          There’s never

enough power  to flood the field or drive            the blood into   
 
its cage. It’s impossible to read the ruins without the missing 
  
part –    Bring the bones to be burned.    The flesh has too many holes. 
  
Ruined,              we say, of the fruit        when it is all juice, of the body, 
 
of the bed           sheets, of the word we cannot say         alone.   



25   The Paris-American

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Beth Bachmann is the author of Temper (Pitt Poetry Series, 2009), winner of the AWP Donald Hall Poetry Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her new manuscript won the 2011 Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award for a book in progress. Find her at  www.bethbachmann.com

   
 Next week's poets:

Ilya Kaminsky & Katie Farris
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