Thea Matthews
Image by Andrew Valdivia from Unsplash
Thea Matthews is a poet, author, and educator originally from San Francisco, California. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her writing has appeared in Southern Indiana Review, Interim, Aster(ix) Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, The New Republic, and others.
Hands Down
After Canisha Lubrin
I’s mimic the horizon between lies
and US soil. I screech in terror to what lays beneath my soil.
I’s trample another direction to avoid eye contact.
To eyes, I am an omen, DNA stained on asphalt.
This country psalms its living under heat.
Another homemade lie cooked at three-seventy-five.
Passed sixteen-nineteen. Passed stiff cotton sheets. Passed
podium debris. Passed my questioning with a razor
the width between artery and skin. I have thought about it
and that’s when I’s wins–––the dollar contest for unilateral
damage––the black boot lodged in the middle of my throat.
I cannot club a grin, badge a number. Eulogies in an iris––
to the pupil in I’s eyes–––this pupil kneels even when
knee caps bust in windows. Black bodies jogging bird
watching playing are a Threat. In central parks, I’s a
parading pick-up truck, a van of red sling shots, a coup
casted in face paint and animal fur. Who is rounding up whom?
Veins meander like tunnels under white soles.
Zip-ties used to convert the protest within the aisle.
I’s walk the good ol’ ye faithful, the old glory up the aisle.
Carry the cross for fourteen stations. See a Simon.
Catch a Lyft at five. What stands divided suffocates blue,
the weight of a taser is not the weight of a gun.
I watch. I’s contentment with resignation.
My hands close to pray.
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