‘The Gates’
— Hannah Cohen
You weren’t alive to me yet, father,
even my fingers tasted like plums.
I admit that I chose this week’s poem out of selfishness and vulnerability. As a reader of poetry, I find myself looking for an abiding image, or some unanswered question that long sticks in my mind after the last word. ‘The Gates’ satisfies this desire and yet leaves me exposed to the coldness of this poem. Images of barbed wire, dead owls, and mothers create a grotesque family narrative, one that I am personally familiar with, and often struggle to write about. ‘The Gates’ is not an easy poem to read, but it’s the one that will stay wrecked in your chest week after week.