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 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 Magazine, Ploughshares, and The Offing, among other venues. She is originally from Birmingham, Alabama. www.gabriellebat.es
More in this series
and though the odds say improbable
they ain’t superhuman. ain’t always able / to save the children the men the country or even your silk presses / but whatever they touch. somebody’s good god blesses.
Corrective State
The people behind bars are captives of war / The people stolen into camps and cages / speak it plain
