Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ABOUT
  • ARCHIVES
  • MARCH 2023
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • AWARDS
  • MASTHEAD

Gabrielle Bates
​

Sonnet for the Saints of Night Day Parade

Fleshclaws of the nuns stained crocus
Chopped purple, demarking with street dust

The knees of black habiting
Crook-bent ladywaists creating a carpet 

So crop & crawl
So crocusal

So unlike the we who bate
These birdlies have too trained to wait

O cross procession of esophageal spasm
& anti-anti-chrysanthemum 

O our sweet hoard of owl in petal
Do make us feel the unfrocked fur 

Flush, flush against the ilium and ulna
Like the new animal in the dark we are


​


Gabrielle Bates is a poetry MFA candidate at the University of Washington, coordinating editor of The Seattle Review, and twitter editor of Broadsided Press. She is an Indiana Review Poetry Prize finalist, a Fairy Tale Review Poetry Contest finalist, and winner of Gigantic Sequins' poetry comic contest. Her work appears in Guernica, Radar Poetry, Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She can be found online at www.gabriellebatesstahlman.com or on twitter (@GabrielleBates).



​
Return to November 2015 Edition