Thea Matthews
She Says We’re dreams walking in the world on the land of red skin red blood on the land of a civil war She says we will walk on rifles for freedom on missiles for food on the hymns of spirituals humming the cries of our children ...
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
Three Poems
We leaned back/in the planetarium/seats, looking up/into the dark–/a father and his/two sons. We heard/what could have been
Our Chernobyl
From my window, I look out at Montpelier’s empty streets, trying to tune out the COVID-19 news updates that ping and bing on my phone, asking myself why this all feels so eerily familiar. I know this jumble of emotions. Fear, helplessness, despair, and also the sense that we’re all in this together.
Surrealism as a Mode of Memory and Instruction in THE FIRE EATER
Surrealism is a flight against Oblivion. Taking to the winds of Memory on the magical wings of the supra-real. Reality through an extraordinary idea of Reality. What creates memory and what creates forgetfulness, surrealism asks us to ask ourselves.
Yolanda
Yolanda, the security guard, sat in a tiny chair behind a school desk at the entrance of the rundown building on West 181st Street that served as headquarters for The District offices. An enormous woman with breasts the size of throw pillows straining the coarse blue fabric of her uniform, she wore her hair pulled up on top of her head in a tight bun; the style fit the determined expression carved into the cool black marble of her face. She hated her job, and probably was surly to everyone, but Mimi took it personally, because Mimi took everything personally.
Realpolitik
I thought talking politics with the manager at the Salt Cavern would be safe—I mean, salt therapy much? But, turns out, Gary had been held up when he worked as a liquor store cashier and had been backing gun rights legislation by way of NRA donations and bumper sticker activism ever since.
The Wonder
We’re sitting idle, another day of no skin, / no face up-turned. It’s not that rain streams us
Review of EVERYBODY’S SON by Thrity Umrigar
Can we ever escape the consequences of an immoral action, even if we think some good will come out of it? Thrity Umrigar, a prominent Indian-American writer, a professor, a journalist, and a Nieman Fellowship recipient, narrates a tale, Everybody’s Son, in which an immoral and illegal act changes lives and makes us wonder whether justice and atonement will follow.
Three Poems
Remember when you lived by a single quote, / repeated most days / with a fundamentalist zeal, / little need to say more?
Airdra
After Airdra divorced me, I gained forty pounds and killed our parakeet. I should have let Airdra take her beloved bird but inflicting pain was my top priority.
The Heart’s Echo: A Review of Marvels of the Invisible by Jenny Molberg
“I walked the tide’s edge / to hear the waves’ hushed dirge,” Jenny Molberg writes in her debut collection Marvels of the Invisible, and the reader walks beside her, line by line, listening to the way a voice can enter the earth and her oceans, and deepen.
Boutonniere
In the blue bathroom, my mother’s hidden Kotex. / My pajama crotch smeared with first blurred fire.