Three Poems by Beth Bachmann

consequence

first comes peace then comes after hold still it’s my turn to bear the light first prayer then song when you start running toward me you never saw me ’til I made you my prisoner you’re so cold the snowfall is rising on your skin don’t deny it first order then order everything in its right & proper place both hands on the weapon all eyes on the body where the blood enters the body there’s always a way out tell the animal asleep in the snug tank I am not an animal

it was not hot

in order to move the snake had a decoy a head like a tail feather the hearts were lined up outside in the incubator competing for warmth we knew two things about the snake if one was pollination there is another way to breathe if one was hunger how to hold a baby – in the mouth one egg in each fist in order to move the flower needed the body of the snake

& love

if the bowl is empty it’s an offering for peace I’d slit the throat of any animal for you I’d break every bone in my hand my body is a vessel a temple a bell you are too beautiful to be motherless someone should tame you if my body your body time & time again in want of nothing

Beth Bachmann is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and the author of two books from the Pitt Poetry Series: Temper, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize and Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Do Not Rise, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. Each fall, she serves as Writer in Residence in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University. Find her on Twitter @bethbachmann.