Malak Mattar, Untitled (detail), 2024, charcoal on paper
Mystery of the Noise the Air Makes When Milled
It’s enough to force you over the edge
and into the water.
This is one consequence of mining wind
to generate light:
killings, the rate of which rises in towns
where the white blades
turn, driven by heat. Still, on a calm day,
something is always
moving, suggesting a harness.
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)