File #2229: "Christie Collins_Elegy.pdf"
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ELEGY
Out of the blue woods,
a kitten wandered our way.
Hours later, she died.
We placed her small body
in a pencil box.
We said goodbye, and we meant it.
We covered her with earth and leaves,
orange and yellow, and moved on
until spring brought us back to the same spot.
There, while digging a place to plant a post,
my father unearthed the forgotten grave.
I stooped to the ground amid the browning
underbrush and lifted the cardboard box,
opening the lid before anyone could warn against it.
What should have been nature at play,
dissolving flesh and fur into shapeless matter
was instead nothing but dust and discoloration.
No bones or body.
It was as if the animal had simply chosen
another fate, rising, rounding her back
in a deep stretch before chasing a lightning bug
or horsefly to the next farm.
I’ve come to think of you in this way:
that maybe just after we left you to rest
on the saddest summer afternoon,
you awoke and decided to instead visit distant
relatives, first in Ipswich and then Nepal,
finding reason after reason
to never come back home.
Maybe just as I say this,
you are walking toward this poem.
Bio
Dr. Christie Collins was born and raised in the American South. She has recently moved back to
Mississippi after a decade away. She currently teaches courses in creative writing and literature at
Mississippi State University. Prior to her return home, she lived in Cardiff, Wales, where she completed a
Ph.D. in Critical and Creative Writing at Cardiff University. She has also taught at Louisiana State
University and Cardiff University. Her critical and creative work has been published in Stirring, Phantom
Drift, Kenyon Review Online, North Carolina Literary Review, Entropy, Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian
Heritage, Poetry South, Poetry Wales, Still: The Journal, So to Speak among others. Her chapbook
titled Along the Diminishing Stretch of Memory was published in 2014 by Dancing Girl Press. Her fulllength collection of poems titled The Art of Coming Undone was published in 2023 by the London-based
publisher The Black Springs Group.
Out of the blue woods,
a kitten wandered our way.
Hours later, she died.
We placed her small body
in a pencil box.
We said goodbye, and we meant it.
We covered her with earth and leaves,
orange and yellow, and moved on
until spring brought us back to the same spot.
There, while digging a place to plant a post,
my father unearthed the forgotten grave.
I stooped to the ground amid the browning
underbrush and lifted the cardboard box,
opening the lid before anyone could warn against it.
What should have been nature at play,
dissolving flesh and fur into shapeless matter
was instead nothing but dust and discoloration.
No bones or body.
It was as if the animal had simply chosen
another fate, rising, rounding her back
in a deep stretch before chasing a lightning bug
or horsefly to the next farm.
I’ve come to think of you in this way:
that maybe just after we left you to rest
on the saddest summer afternoon,
you awoke and decided to instead visit distant
relatives, first in Ipswich and then Nepal,
finding reason after reason
to never come back home.
Maybe just as I say this,
you are walking toward this poem.
Bio
Dr. Christie Collins was born and raised in the American South. She has recently moved back to
Mississippi after a decade away. She currently teaches courses in creative writing and literature at
Mississippi State University. Prior to her return home, she lived in Cardiff, Wales, where she completed a
Ph.D. in Critical and Creative Writing at Cardiff University. She has also taught at Louisiana State
University and Cardiff University. Her critical and creative work has been published in Stirring, Phantom
Drift, Kenyon Review Online, North Carolina Literary Review, Entropy, Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian
Heritage, Poetry South, Poetry Wales, Still: The Journal, So to Speak among others. Her chapbook
titled Along the Diminishing Stretch of Memory was published in 2014 by Dancing Girl Press. Her fulllength collection of poems titled The Art of Coming Undone was published in 2023 by the London-based
publisher The Black Springs Group.