Judas goat / Gabrielle Bates.

"Gabrielle Bates's electric debut collection Judas Goat plumbs the depths of intimate relationships. The book's eponymous animal is used to lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared, and its harrowing existence echoes through this spellbinding collection of forty poems, which wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the "forbidden felt language" of sexual and sacred love. These poems conjure encounters with figures from scriptures, domesticated animals eyeing the wild, and mothering as a shape-shifting, spectral force; they question what it means to love another person and how to exorcise childhood fears. All the while, the Deep South haunts, and no matter how far away the speaker moves, the South always draws her back home. In confession, in illumination, Bates establishes herself as an unflinching witness to the risks that desire necessitates, as Judas Goat holds readers close and whispers its unforgettable lines"-- Provided by publisher.

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.