Baptist in the Summer
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PINK POETRY PRIZE
Almost the sun rising in your chest, almost
the moon too. Except you are also the sun
& the moon rising—reaching for what is
reaching. I wanted to feel it too. What caused
the moon women to stomp up rivers, to faint
into their daughters, return to a man they feared.
The pew a trenching, a surging purple field.
The scene too ecstatic to slow:
bodies fine-tuned
to their wishing; tambourines talking back to god
as cocoons wax & wane beneath the deacon’s tongue.
My mother’s wet & opened face. Where was she
in her looking at me, her palm now hovering above
mine? Her sight an engine. Her sight two hands daring
my blood. Do you feel that, the electricity? she panted.
Yes, I lied. Forgive me. Yes, my eyes flinched shut.
Modern American Film
it is not remarkable to be honest about your loneliness. it is not remarkable to want, after your
concert, for me to stand on the edge of the tub, as you kneel inside of it, & release onto you the
water i drank feverishly as if to soothe the fire that burned mute in my throat as i sat in the audience.
it is not remarkable to take me to dinner, for you to pay & choose the oldest wine. for you to wave
handsomely at the musicians you conducted handsomely from your podium, your slacks a second
skin, greedy & pressing your salt to you. it is not remarkable for me to have wanted your salt. to have
had it. to have given you mine, to have had it again. you’re here for work. you’re lonely. (& i am
a quiet fire. & i nurse even the night until it blushes blue against the blinds.) so you say come to my home,
i have a library for you to write in, i have a room made ready for you. it is not remarkable for me to have
waved at the musicians, smiling, while considering this life, dry & sardonic, i imagine, as the bread
curdled to clay in my mouth as i waved. this life of sharp wine & kneeling & fingers tracing wet lips.
my fingers tracing your lips, tracing a question we both ignored. you’re here for work. you’ve read
my book. you like your ass too & are asking me now about grief. about loneliness as an irrevocable
condition. as a home with no use for locks. but then the waiter. but then we stumbled like dice
against the sidewalk. i was not—& then October’s wind sharpened its teeth against the bricks—i was
hard & i wanted to prove i could still want despite my will; my will, the toothpick balancing at
the cusp of your lip was wet with your tongue. bending. then your tongue at my tip. again. & again,
a question. a caution, a fire we could smell but not yet see. your tongue was not remarkable. as we sat
in the lobby for breakfast, you, tough with the morning’s grainy light, cut into the news’ clatter
beside us that Stacey Abrams could be something if she dropped the angry black woman mask...You know?
& me, with a century’s sigh, finishing my water
About the author
Donte Collins is held. Black. Adopted. Queer. A surrealist blues poet haunted by the 1960’s Black Arts Movement. Named the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Saint Paul, Minnesota, they are a McKnight Artist Fellowship recipient for Spoken Word administered by the Loft Literary Center and winner of the Most Promising Young Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets. They are the author of the poetry collection Autopsy (Button Poetry, 2017), a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. Collins is the recipient of the Mitchell Prize in Poetry from Augsburg University and is currently the program director of Black Table Arts, a community-driven arts cooperative located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, gathering Black communities through the arts toward better Black futures.