Judas Goat
Author/Uploaded by Gabrielle Bates
Contents Cover Title Contents The Dog Should the First Calf of Winter Be White, You’re Going to Hate Impermanent Intro to Theater Effigy Little Lamb The Animals We Are Dear Gretel Strawberries [Who Hasn’t Lain in a Yard with Boys] Dear Birmingham How Judas Died Conversation with Mary Time Lapse Sa...
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Contents Cover Title Contents The Dog Should the First Calf of Winter Be White, You’re Going to Hate Impermanent Intro to Theater Effigy Little Lamb The Animals We Are Dear Gretel Strawberries [Who Hasn’t Lain in a Yard with Boys] Dear Birmingham How Judas Died Conversation with Mary Time Lapse Sabbath The Mentor Eastern Washington Diptych The Greatest Show on Earth Saint of Ongoingness Self-Portrait as Provincial “Person” Comes from “Mask” When Her Second Horn, the Only Horn She Has Left, Ice / / Tithes The Bridge In the Dream in Which I Am a Widow And Even After All That, No Epiphany Dance Party at the Public Glasshouse Judas Goat The Lucky Ones Economic Mobility I Asked // I Got Illusion Garden Rosification Ownership Salmon This Is How Mud Is Made Again Mothers Anniversary Acknowledgments Copyright page_iii page_v page_vi page_vii page_ix page_1 page_2 page_3 page_5 page_6 page_7 page_8 page_9 page_10 page_11 page_12 page_13 page_14 page_15 page_16 page_17 page_18 page_19 page_20 page_21 page_22 page_23 page_25 page_26 page_27 page_28 page_29 page_30 page_31 page_32 page_33 page_34 page_35 page_37 page_38 page_39 page_40 page_41 page_42 page_43 page_44 page_45 page_46 page_47 page_48 page_49 page_50 page_51 page_52 page_53 page_54 page_55 page_56 page_57 page_58 page_59 page_60 page_61 page_62 page_63 page_64 page_65 page_67 page_68 page_69 page_70 page_71 page_72 page_73 page_74 page_75 page_76 page_77 page_78 page_79 page_80 page_81 page_82 page_83 page_84 page_85 page_86 page_87 page_88 page_89 page_90 page_91 page_92 page_93 page_94 page_i page_ii page_iv Guide Cover Title JUDASGOAT GABRIELLE BATES For the image CONTENTS The Dog Should the First Calf of Winter Be White, You’re Going to Hate Impermanent Intro to Theater Effigy Little Lamb The Animals We Are Dear Gretel Strawberries [Who Hasn’t Lain in a Yard with Boys] Dear Birmingham How Judas Died Conversation with Mary Time Lapse Sabbath The Mentor Eastern Washington Diptych The Greatest Show on Earth Saint of Ongoingness Self-Portrait as Provincial “Person” Comes from “Mask” When Her Second Horn, the Only Horn She Has Left, Ice / / Tithes The Bridge In the Dream in Which I Am a Widow And Even After All That, No Epiphany Dance Party at the Public Glasshouse Judas Goat The Lucky Ones Economic Mobility I Asked // I Got Illusion Garden Rosification Ownership Salmon This Is How Mud Is Made Again Mothers Anniversary Acknowledgments JUDASGOAT THE DOG He didn’t want to tell me. He almost didn’t. It was luck much more than gut that made me ask. A beer opened an hour earlier than usual, the desire for conversation. There was no sense in me that he was in some sort of aftermath. He said, when I asked, I had a bad day, or, I had a weird day, I can’t remember. I saw a dog, he said. I was on the train. A man with a dog on a leash. The man ran and made it but the dog hesitated outside, and the doors closed— no, not on his neck—on the leash, trapping it. The man was inside, and the dog was outside on the platform. The button beside the door, ringed in light, blinked. The man was shouting now, hitting the button, all else silent, the befuddlement of dog pulled along, the pace slow until it wasn’t. The tunnel the train must pass through leaving the station is a perfectly calibrated, unforgiving fit. The dog had a color and a size I don’t know, so it comes to me as legion. Large. Small. Fur long, or short. White, or gray. But the man always looks the same. As I held him against me in our kitchen, the moment sharpened my eyes. How easily I could imagine a version of our lives in which he kept all his suffering secret from me. I saw the beer on the counter. I saw myself drink it. When we went to bed, I stared at the back of his head split between compassion and fury. My nails gently scratching up his arm, up and down, up and down, the blade without which the guillotine is nothing. The body goes into such raptures of obedience. —Linda Gregg SHOULD THE FIRST CALFOF WINTER BE WHITE,YOU’RE GOING TO HATE what it IMPERMANENT If your name will ever not be gravel in my mouth, I
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