Name: smile??'s review of Autopsy by Donte Collins
Item: Autopsy
Rating: 4.5
Author: smile??

Donte Collins

Written after the death of their mother, Donte Collins's Autopsy establishes the poet as one of the most important voices in the next generation of American poetry. As the book unfolds, the reader journeys alongside the author through grief and healing. Named the Most Promising Young Poet in the country by the Academy of American Poets, Collins's work has consistently wowed audiences. Autopsy propels that work onto the national stage. In the words of the author, the book is a spring thaw - the new life alongside the old, the good cry and the release after.

Autopsy

smile??

godless storm of each of them, are waiting

for your mother to walk into her funeral, to

sit next to all of her children at once, to lean 

into the soft of her shoulder, for her to whisper

this is a full poem (one of my favorites in the collection) titled 

like some brash & greedy lover, the earth

curls its frigid limbs around your mother's

flake resting too boldly on her tombstone.

for its ability to hunger - to call anything

food. this is the first funeral your mother

your tuneless bones. January holds winter

your body will become to fertilize the earth.

who are you, now, if not your mother's child?

even when, like a groggy, silent god, winter

come spring, must grieve. to thaw is a thing

of release. of new, wet life beckoning a child's

hands. look at how mud can clean any stone

in the garden. carefully make out your mother's

face among the good soil. yes donte, winter

will leave & will come again & from the earth 

will grow from her smile flagging in April's earthly

wind. a bulb. a stem. a stalk braving anything

will leave & will take her body with. children

adoption: the most beautiful erasure, the most successful

punchline. a lineage snapped at the neck then nursed back to

flight. look at the boy with water for blood. look at the boy

twice removed from his identity. do not ask me if i know

whose body i belong to. do not ask me which are my real

siblings. if blood is thicker than water then love must be

What is a dream / if not the mind pulling ribbons from my throat

[...] you throw a mug across the kitchen & envy its sudden dissection every word your mother last spoke scuttles like mice into your deserted head memory is a ruptured organ memory is a ghost begging for new flesh memory taps a gun to your inner skull & demands you bring back the dead

rakes the night sky of its stars, keeps them as leverage, as bulb-less lamps 

in the basement of me. i am alive if alive means to be a moth caught in the

hands of some childish grief. shake me to see if i am still breathing. burn

confession: the want to die is not always the want not to live, but sometimes

the want to live somewhere softer. where the tall grass lulls my body to sleep

do you still perform autopsies on conversations

you've had lives ago? are you still wondering what gen

they would have found dandelion seeds had they done the autopsy: they would have found a field of burning lavender had they cut her open

& look: you're just a boy / grieving until he too is a thing

his pulse is as thin & damp as an obituary panting beneath quaking

press your pulse to as many strangers as possible: to compare

& suddenly your blood stiffens / retreats / rewinds / no one died

is still just wood / unchopped / reassembled / the tree, resurrected

grief is not yet a garden of thorns blooming

i am alive by luck at this point. i wonder

flock of blue jays, will come carry my black

to its final bed, which photo will be used

- a heart-shattering collection of poetry about grief, family, race, and growing up queer and black

- this collection might be proof that some people are just born brilliant. i've looked far and wide, and i'm quite certain at this point that this is the only piece of writing that donte has ever had published and that is a TRAGEDY. this kid is incredibly talented at writing in verse

- the grief sestina is the best poem i've ever read. you could read just that poem alone and it would be worth the price of the whole book and then some

- breaks my heart that this collection has gathered almost no attention no matter where you look. i feel like the stars misaligned and we're living in a wrong timeline where donte isn't the staple poet of this generation

- grief mothers your tuneless bones

- a heart-shattering collection of poetry about grief, family, race, and growing up queer and black

- this collection might be proof that some people are just born brilliant. i've looked far and wide, and i'm quite certain at this point that this is the only piece of writing that donte has ever had published and that is a TRAGEDY. this kid is incredibly talented at writing in verse

- the grief sestina is the best poem i've ever read. you could read just that poem alone and it would be worth the price of the whole book and then some

- breaks my heart that this collection has gathered almost no attention no matter where you look. i feel like the stars misaligned and we're living in a wrong timeline where donte isn't the staple poet of this generation

smile?? &
Autopsy by Donte Collins

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smile?? &Autopsy by Donte Collins

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Autopsy by Donte Collins