Time Lapse
In a time lapse, nothing happens smoothly. / Red horns quake as they splinter / from limbs on the bottlebrush.
“Time Lapse”
A hummingbird is pulled like a bull toward the loudest reds, lands on the inmost branch to preen
the arching back of her green torso. I think of the sentence
while I lowered myself to a frameless, twin-sized mattress:
Your neck looks sobreakable.
Red horns quake as they splinter from limbs on the bottlebrush. It was
walking around the cemetery I liked to visit when the weather was good,
And what did I say to him, Thank you
Gabrielle Bates is the author of the poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023). Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently works for Seattle's poetry-only bookstore Open Books: A Poem Emporium and co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon. Her work can be found in the New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. www.gabriellebat.es / Twitter: @GabrielleBates
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