Electric Nativity, and: A New Way of Thinking about Space, and: Quotes from the Papers, and: Last Call, and: First Mystery of My Sister
Rent from DeepDyve- Electric Nativity, and: A New Way of Thinking about Space, and: Quotes from the Papers, and: Last Call, and: First Mystery of My Sister
Electric Nativity
Because you are the husband, it is your job to slip your handunder Mary's skirt, up to the elbow as into a goat,searching for the burned out bulb at the back of her throat.
She's lost her after-birth-glow and is lying on her sideswapping wires with one of the shepherds. Already,her womb wants another child, a sister. [End Page 79]
Joseph's on his knees, with his fingers crossed, sizing upthe boy who does not have his eyes or his mouth,only her body, her blood.
A New Way of Thinking about Space
In Giotto's cross we see for the first time the weight of the body pulling against the wood.
This is the moment after the accusation of the father, when the effects of gravity
take over. It's a break with the past, a refusal to stylize the holy, an opening
of the plane.
Quotes from the Papers
My mother's making the man -dirty, disheveled
in the doorway-a sandwich, turkey on white, quartered, [End Page 80]
when he says: There's a lot of places to hide a body.
He lingers at the entrance, beneath the three kings
holiday card taped at the keystone. The star, the angel
says, look to the east: check the train yard.
Last Call
Come get me. A father in his pajamas, a daughter on the end of the line calling for a pick up.
A father in his pajamas, in his stick-shift, switches gears; the pick up pulls up to the train station.
His stick-shift switches gears. She's not there; he pulls up to the train station bar, the cigarette machine, payphone.
She's not there; he drops some change at the bar, the cigarette machine, payphone. In the freight yard, a body [End Page 81]
drops. Some change crosses over a face in the freight yard. A body's last words
cross over a face: a daughter at the end of the line calling her last words, come get me.
First Mystery of My Sister
He unleashed the dog and waited, plastic bag in hand.Sparky barked, nosed along the tracks
into the no-man's property between station, line and road.Commuters numbed against the windows watched the nodding thistle
shiver as the 6:42 lunged toward the city. Overgrowth, long fingersof grass, the bud of a dull tattoo-what remains-
her tagged body,the dog at dawn sniffing a greening rose. [End Page 82]
Beth Bachmann's poems have recently appeared in the Southern Review, the Antioch Review, Image, and elsewhere.
