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
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
