Thea Matthews
Summer 2023 | Poetry
Aftermath
For Margot
Here, you see the exhibit of vicious expressionism –
the lyric under euphoria, the sky where clouds vomit in line
for more. Could you ever stand in such beauty?––where
cops so bored, they play with fireworks aimlessly in a pool
of polyester endowment, on asphalt, pixelated stars
congregate over broken cardboard boxes, where vandals
carve initials on trees forced to hold the lynched. Like leaves
against the coercive wind, flames now sway for reparations.
O our city! ––a slow suicide, a last breath found in a pill bottle.
She disappeared, was found dead face down. The houseless
in tents remember her name. They say the city killed her
as they lay on crushed newspapers––promises––for more
housing to rectify the homelessness, the crisis.
She was once alive.
Thea Matthews is a poet, author, and educator of African and Indigenous Mexican descent born and raised on the land of the Ohlone, San Francisco, California. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and a BA in sociology from UC Berkeley. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Epiphany journal, On the Seawall, The Courtland Review, West Trade Review, Southern Indiana Review, Interim, Tahoma Literary Review, The New Republic, and others. She has been nominated for Best New Poets 2022 and Best of the Net 2021 for her work; and is the author of Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press, 2020), which was listed under Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry of 2020.
Thea recommends Robin Coste Lewis’s To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, Rio Cortez’s Golden Axe, Phan Nhiên Hạo’s The Song Cave, translated by Hai-Dang Phan.