Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convertiendse en Characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
Mystery Ending With a Girl in a Field
You’ve heard it before—but listen:
_ I brought you into this world,_
_ I can take you out of it._
I know what you’re thinking.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.
Nothing’s resolved. But what does it matter?
I could pull these petals off all day,
mouthing he loves me, he loves me not.
Beth Bachmann has published poems in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her first book, Temper (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. (updated 6/2010)