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  i bet if they knew we hid beneath the bridges they built they would tear those down

  AUTOPSY

  AUTOPSY

  POEMS BY

  Donte Collins

  © 2017 by Donte Collins

  Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

  Minneapolis, MN 55403 | http://www.buttonpoetry.com

  All Rights Reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Cover Design: Nikki Clark

  Author Photograph: Marlen Boro

  ISBN 978-1-943735-11-2

  Ebook ISBN 9781943735259

  Every word is for my late mother Mary Lou Collins & anyone who has ever helped us carry in the groceries

  The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed.

  – OCEAN VUONG, “SOMEDAY I’LL LOVE OCEAN VUONG”

  …And my family go through it with me We lost a lot, all I feel is empty.

  – LAMAR COLLINS, FACEBOOK

  If you aren’t able to describe it, you will not be able to survive it.

  – JAMES BALDWIN, THE CROSS OF REDEMPTION: UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS

  DEATH AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A SONG

  my mother moved out

  of her body decided it

  was no longer worthy

  it couldn’t contain her laughter

  she couldn’t obey the house

  rules of human her spirit

  that young & fresh fever wanted

  to call the night her dance club

  wanted to try on new clothes

  stay out later

  my mother now wears the world

  dresses herself with the tall grass

  blushes her cheeks with red clay

  she laughs & a forest fire awakens

  she laughs & every mountain bows

  to her sharp thunder she laughs

  & each cicada begins to sing last

  night Saint Paul was cloaked in steam:

  fog traveled from some distant heat

  no, i think you’ve got it all wrong

  someone must have asked my mother

  to dance

  CONTENTS

  Death Ain’t Nothin’ but a Song

  Don’t Tell Your Uber Driver You’re Going to an Orgy

  Sonnet on Sweet

  [Definitions]

  Other Things They Would Have Found

  The Orphan Performs an Autopsy on the Garden

  Thirteen Ways of Looking at Thirteen

  Grief: The Inconvenient Translator

  Old Rondo - Age 16

  What the Dead Know by Heart

  The Orphan Performs an Autopsy on Old Rondo

  Whiteness Shops for a Prayer

  The Orphan Performs an Autopsy on the National Anthem

  New Country

  The Orphan Dines with Ghosts

  In Which the Orphan’s Sister Is Murdered Six Months after His Mother’s Death

  Five Stages of Grief

  Grief, Again

  Teething: A Crumbling Pantoum

  Alphabet Soup

  The Orphan Performs an Autopsy on Adoption

  Alternate Beginning: The Game

  Adoption Day: Homecoming, 1998

  To Keep from Saying Orphan

  Grief Sestina

  Long Story Short

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  DON’T TELL YOUR UBER DRIVER YOU’RE GOING TO AN ORGY

  besides, her name is diane & she only has this job

  because her niece says she should be more social

  do not, nervously, try to cover up your mistake by

  saying you meant b-oar-d mee-tin-g. besides, it’s

  3 a.m. & the only things open this late

  can

  also

  request

  another

  thing

  to

  open

  do not try to cancel the ride. it is not your account. those who

  sent for your body were kind enough to pay the $15.50 it took

  for you to arrive. your nails are already too jagged to chew on

  you’ve produced enough sweat to fill the vehicle & drown

  you both. you consider headphones. you consider ripping out

  your tongue in fear of confessing more & before you reach for

  the handle to tuck & roll clean out of her 2004 Honda Civic

  she says:

  how many

  bodies will you try on tonight / & suddenly she is your mother

  or her ghost

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

  the casket

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

  working &

  grief is not yet a garden of thorns blooming

  in your chest

  & grief is not yet a question you’ve answered with sex

  the slow

  teasing out of sweat like loose thread unraveling

  your sadness

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

  to grieve / until

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

  hands & what

  is an orgy, if not the opposite

  of a funeral, if not an attempt to

  press your

  pulse to as many strangers as possible: to compare

  how alive

  you still are. & isn’t the car now your mother’s hearse / parading

  her body

  to that freshly gutted plot of earth & suddenly you are the driver

  / suddenly

  the sky breaks a sweat / its whole body blue & ballooning wet

  but you’re also the casket

  but you’re also the soggy grave parting its greedy

  lips / you ghost

  orphan / you motherless phantom considering the dive

  following

  your maker, buried alive / i know, you desire decay, donte

  / you desire

  now, a way to die without losing your body: so why not use

  it / why not let a stranger lick the grief from your palms & this too is eulogy

  this too is prayer

  & this too can water the seeds to conjure

  thornless crops

  can sing back alive whatever parts of you died

  with her

  whatever leapt into your mother’s closing crate

  & diane slams the brakes. you have arrived she says be safe. his

  apartment door: a pearly gate, a cliff overlooking a thrashing lake

  & your blood begins & you lighthouse your tongue & you ship

  wreck an entire room to driftwood. O this festival of lament

  O this sloppy surgery, this homemade baptism. you reek of grief

  they taste the salt streaming your cheek. you lonely riot, you laughing

  graveyard. you hungry & haunted boy. i know, i know. you want

  so badly to feel alive. you want so badly to be born

  again

  SONNET ON SWEET

  after Tarell Alvin McCraney

  back then they would have tied me to a post

  gave the whip to the sweet boy i wrapped

  my lips around until he wept the most

  brackish prayer: he dripped like maple sap

  each tthh-wack opens a small sky in my skin

  he swin
gs softly & avoids my old welts

  lynch say beat the slave out of the sin

  so massa take pride in my lover’s help

  can’t produce slaves if men lay with men

  can’t run free when massa stole your feet

  plantation can’t afford no cotton gin

  when two black bucks is worth a pound of meat

  so massa rubbed sugar sap in my scars

  & left me till my black swelled bright as stars

  orphan [ˈôrfən/]

  i.e. the lawyer says: you are not orphans as long as you have each other i.e. like any good orphan, he took up gardening, attempts to forgive the earth i.e. the orphan mothers his own origin

  autopsy [ˈôˌtäpsē]

  i.e. 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

  OTHER THINGS THEY WOULD HAVE FOUND

  vineyard of charred candle wicks

  fraying wicker broom

  grocery bags of unopened letters

  garage of rusting tap shoes

  coffee-stained divorce papers

  divorce papers stuffed in a shoebox

  divorce papers framed on the wall

  garden of swinging dandelions

  basement brimming with box cutters

  wedding ring singed beneath ash

  wedding ring severed at the mouth

  wedding ring bent into bobby pin

  grocery bag of other rolled up grocery bags

  an oak foot-powered sewing machine

  two antique hair dryers

  washboard & elbow grease

  grocery bag of clean rags

  forest of ripening plums

  cupboard of chipped plates

  collection of cast iron skillets

  instructions on how to properly play sequence

  rusted tin box spilling with recipes, receipts

  court gavels: one for each child

  ashtray of soot pennies

  a badge & a bad hip

  white flag stained red

  two infant black girl hands,

  extended: longing to be held

  THE ORPHAN PERFORMS AN AUTOPSY ON THE GARDEN

  there are many ways to pull a weed

  but only one will keep the garden

  clean come the end of summer

  your mother will be dead

  13 years - 2 months - 11 days - 7 hours from now

  & you curse her beneath your breath. flick beaded sweat gathered

  like pearls at the crease of your brow & continue to rip up the earth

  why does heat make the body confess what it will not do otherwise?

  drunk on july & nerve you rip handfuls of color from along the fence

  thorns like brief alarms warning your fevered temper of what blood

  will soon stain your teeth. never. ruin. your. mother’s. new. plants

  your mother will be dead

  3 years - 6 months - 9 hours from now

  & a man, not your father, calls you baby. calls the house phone past

  midnight. waits, like warm fog, outside your bedroom window, wants

  to use your mouth to raise his children. why does heat make the body

  confess what it will not do otherwise?

  sneaking out of a house built of creaking wood can only end with

  red smeared across checkered linoleum. can only cause a mother to

  lock the doors from the outside. deadbolt & don’t disrespect my house

  again! basement stairs & belt buckle branded—a birthmark across

  your sprouting back. see me: a field of dry & rebellious wheat thrashing

  until flaming. until ash

  your mother will be dead

  3 days - 6 hours - 14 minutes from now

  & wants to take you to lunch. insists on giving you all your old inhalers,

  face-cream, old shoes. says you never know. says if i died i wouldn’t

  know what to do with all of this—points—the china cabinet, a small

  museum of memories. says we laughed a lot, too. our faces framed &

  frozen to happy. says if you & lamar don’t know i love you, know now

  & now she is weeping. see her: a black sky cracking, offering water: as

  if to say: forgiveness is a fertile thing—is what makes tomorrow grow

  & / just / like / that / she’s / dead / a / porch / light / gone / out / a

  wind / chime / songless / sunken / into / soil / you / untethered / 19

  returning / to / an / empty / home / find / your / hands / busy / in

  an / abandoned / garden / joy / must / be / a / flower / among / all

  of / this / knotted / agony / there / are / many / ways / to / pull / grief

  from / the / body / but / only / one / will / keep / the / boy / alive

  THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT THIRTEEN

  after Patricia Smith

  they ask you to prove it: describe its pink perfectly

  you are lying & looking down. you are thinking of

  clever ways to creep out of the conversation. they

  ask if you used a condom, you consider your op

  tions. think it cool to say no because you’re too raw for

  that. too axe cologne & black muscle shirt, more shirt than

  muscle. more mask than masculine. you say soft, it felt

  good, went in, one hour & the games begin. how straight

  can you pretend to be? what new sex story can you

  steal from t.v. & wear like padded muscles. you soft

  knuckle boy with question marks for teeth. you lunch table

  magician spinning tales from thin air. the thing about

  masks is someone always sees the string behind your head

  •

  you knew what was coming if you slept past 8 a.m. &

  if it wasn’t a cold bucket of water it would

  have been the leather belt she kept soaking in the sink.

  praise the mercy of your mother. praise the water that

  awoke your still body from slumber. the sudden jolt

  of relief in finding your drowning was just a dream

  or, rather, just a moment. praise then, too, every soft

  punishment: the gun-barrel stare, the one-leg-book-bal

  ancing act in the corner, the rice cutting stars in

  to your knees. praise the spatula & the upturned palm

  the basement stairs & stale saltine crackers for dinner.

  hosanna, the overgrown weeds & the tree switch that

  refused to break. remember: this hurts her more than you

  •

  in class: when called on like a thief & something on you

  stiffens, hardens & hangs like an ornament, like a

  wooden plank & you must walk it to the front of the

  room. your heart will become a drum, you will forget the

  reason of your feet, your face will call your bluff, this is

  the fifth time this week your body has become a bus

  & swallowed you under it. there is no equation

  for correcting an unwanted erection. walk with

  hands hammered into the stitching of your pockets, pre

  tend to be searching for the sun. set your binder be

  fore your zipper & tap your thumb, play it cool, cock

  your chin back, break no sweat. you soldier of study, you

  bucket of brave, you Fruit of the Loom panic, got this!

  •

  possessed or bold, stealthy-like-hawk you steal a cigar

  from your uncle’s jacket. nevermind he just got out

  of prison & has a circus wire temper. you’ve

  seen the way smoke bellows from his blackened lips & think

  you, too, can make smoke rise, front flip up your throat & slide

  down your nostrils. puff out a ring to slide on any

  girl’s naked finger. too cool for school & too hot
for

  curfew, you stuff your pants with a sock & learn to walk

  chest puffed & panting. learn to show your teeth & drool with

  out reason. gasoline for ego. bloodtype: ticking

  preteen is a shirt too small for your budding muscles

  you take the tattered lighter found on your way home from

  school. light. inhale & keep the smoke safely in your cheeks

  •

  neon green skinny jeans. frohawk dyed hot cheeto red

  the New Boyz just released Imma Jerk & 7th grade bursts

  into a carnival of cut up khakis, spiked glass

  es, clorox bleached goodwill bought polo shirts. we glue

  glitter on frazzled, handmade capris & dance as if

  trying to escape the devil. craft death-defying

  routines of knee-drops & gliding. spend recess choosing

  teams & battling to music made with our mouths. gen

  der doesn’t exist when everyone wants to move their

  hips, grind, prance. wobble & wear their sister’s tight denims

  you: the class conductor, the color queen of rhythm

  with Kool-Aid in your hair are finally free. have found

  a way to squeeze faggotry into a year-long fad

  •

  you don’t clean to the same music you cook to. not

  in this house, where everything is an antique & cloaked

  in plastic. not when Janet’s I get so lonely comes

  on, the perfect tempo to scrub the black ring from the

  porcelain tub & Luther is wailing about loss

  when you got fresh collards cackling on the stove. you

  don’t cook while you clean unless you want a hint of

  Pine-Sol in the peach cobbler. unless you enjoy the

  roundabout task of making a mess after wiping

  one up. this is my first lesson in first impressions:

  bleach the countertop until it reflects the ceiling

  fan, season the chicken until it glistens, set the

  good plates, scrub like jesus christ is coming to dinner

  •

  somewhere they’re sagging their pants & language into slang

  they’re resting their tongues in the mouths of a daughter, some

  where a mother becomes a bitch by definition