Afterlife
When I was a child I believed heaven was a place
where one could say exactly what they needed.
Inside the ossuary church at Kutna Hora
I tapped a skull on display.
I forget skin is made of layers
until I get burnt. Again I remember
the canal at dawn, a swan circling,
dragging a fan of bones on the water.
Sweat cooled on my surface: a person becoming a vase.
I could lick your face and taste
the book that opened
then closed over an army.
I was born in a tower. I thought
someone would stop me.
Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), a New York Times Book Review Critic's Pick, NPR Best Book of 2023, and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and serves as visiting faculty for the Tin House Writers' Workshops. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Believer, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. // IG: @gabrielle_bates_