Corbin Louis
found dead by their parents
in bedrooms they were raised in
and rose the petal of veins
with such blueness and still rose
onto mantles before the ground
the whole bunch of them like
a bouquet cut at the stem
and placed perfectly for us
to cherish and from the dirt
before going back into it
***
A recent Jack Straw Writer’s Resident and MFA graduate at the University of Washington, Corbin Louis is a Seattle native making work out of a legacy of grunge and rain and illness. Each piece serves as a form of sublimation, transforming dysfunction into arrangements of self-reflection and cultural critique. Corbin’s goal as an artist is to garner awareness and support around mental illness by creating pieces that shriek for understanding, and he has been published by Best American Experimental Writing, Random Sample Review, Visible Poetry Project and others.