Donte Collins
Donte Collins is a surrealist blues poet named the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Saint Paul, Minnesota, the recipient of a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Spoken Word, and winner of the Most Promising Young Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets. They are a 2021 Gregory Djanikian Scholar selected by The Adroit Journal & the author of Autopsy (Button Poetry, 2017), a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. Collins received the Mitchell Prize in Poetry from Augsburg University and is an alum of TruArtSpeaks, an arts & culture organization cultivating literacy, leadership, and social justice through the study & application of Spoken Word and Hip Hop culture.
Queer Haiku #1
body: narrative
spirit: abstract. example:
i love you/ i love
Queer Haiku #3
narrative: the boy
singing of love is the rain
wishing to reverse
Queer Haiku #4
abstract: the rain sings
of love, guides the boy back
to his body, rinsed
Queer Haiku #6
of bloodroot, collard
my smile a sentence you
complete. i love you
Queer Haiku #7
lord, i want to be
of use. of love, my breath. birds
softening the rain
Queer Haiku #8
coppered, night-twined son.
your beginning forgets you.
your life, the next word:
Queer Haiku #10
moondark as the day’s
salt. our shadows wet against
the wall—breathe with me
Queer Haiku #9
your name a gemstone
returned from a dream. awoke
thundered in burnished light
Queer Haiku #2
we make what can’t be taken,
what can’t end in vain. Nigga;
Night, moons chase our love
Queer Haiku #11
tonight, the moon is
a secrete the clouds weep while
confessing: d o n t e
Queer Haiku #12
latin. means to last.
endure. & doesn’t the rain
wish to mean its name?
Queer Haiku #14
gone with your lover.
i fever desire’s stone
& shatter the moon
SELF PORTRAIT AS LEATHER BELT IN MY MOTHER’S HAND
never around a father’s waist
never a father never
polite
or brought out for decoration
never bought to fit &
still
somehow fits when sunday
come around & even
sunday
can’t save you not the kind
of salvation that keeps
your mother’s hands fixed tight
around her leather bible
damn. almost forgot
i’m made
of that too
i too was born from slaughter ha
i too was severed from the body
that grew me even the skin
is good for something donte &
look at yours: sizzling nearly
smoke on my lips wrapped
around your mother’s fist i am
merely the messenger the red
cloth dizzying the bull the rake
scraping cement yes the wasp’s
benevolent kiss & us a slow
motion massacre crimson kin
yes. i wish. i could. pause. this.
moment. too. cradle you instead
unslice the burning air unswell
your sweet skin i wish i was your
mother wish i was softer to greet
you gently: alabaster sugarcane
wish me wind & you
the whole flock & you
the whole flock & you
the whole flock & you
DECLARATIVE SENTENCES ON DESIRE
The beginning of the body cannot be found.
From here, the snowstorm’s tattered sheet makes
The deer a spotted shadow puppet, the graveyard’s
Locked gate makes the deer allegorical. Sometimes,
When I am not asleep, I swell with worry. I swell
& the train’s automated voice reminds me of my stop.
Winter begins everywhere. This city is slush
& construction. Last night, a stranger’s warmth.
Our bodies pressed into new punctuation. The opposite
Is also true, even when asleep, a woman’s mechanical
Threat in my ear: No Smoking. Federal Regulations—
Remember me,
Remember me
As the wind strips
Each oak clean, a bone. Everywhere evidence of our
Brief feast & yet the bill is too high a gate to jump.
Fine, once more: Hunger Is the body’s first invention. Loneliness.
Loneliness its last.