BOMB is honored to announce the winner of our 2022 Poetry Contest: Donte Collins! Guest judge Solmaz Sharif selected this year's winner, who will receive a $1,000 prize and will be published in our Fall 2022 issue.
In her citation for @dontecollinsthepoet , Solmaz Sharif writes, "The poems speak for themselves, and around and aside. Funny, frank, scathing, patient, eddying, they're liquid in their turning of phrases, of repetition.. Reading these poems by Donte Collins readies me."
— Donte Collins, “Five Stages of Grief” from Autopsy
from Autopsy by Donte Collins
autopsy, donte collins
you hungry & haunted boy. i know, i know. you want so badly to feel alive. you want so badly to be born again.
– Donte Collins, from “Don’t Tell Your Uber Driver You’re Going To An Orgy” in Autopsy
[she] moved out of her body decided it was no longer worthy
— Donte Collins, from “Death Ain’t Nothing But a Song,” Autopsy
nina simone performs “i wish i knew how it would feel to be free” at the montreux jazz festival, 1976, switzerland
“memory is a ghost begging for new flesh”
— Autopsy: Grief, Again by Donte Collins
I crave a love that happens as sweetly
as it was named. If love must be swung,
let it soften. Not split.
— Donte Collins, from “Prayer Severing the Cycle,” published in Poem-a-Day
I say I matter and a ghost white hand appears over my mouth
— Donte Collins, from “what the dead know by heart,” published in Academy of American Poets
“you are most beautiful whenever you are most comfortable. whenever you are most, you”
— Donte Collins, note to self
“i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house.”
From Donte Collins’ phenomenal book, AUTOPSY.
