RAIN LILIES | Zephyranthes grandiflora
BIO
Born and raised in San Francisco, CA, Thea Matthews earned her BA in Sociology from U.C. Berkeley where she studied and taught June Jordan's Poetry for the People. Her work is featured in Tilde Issue 3/ Thirty West Publishing House, Digging Through The Fat/ Digging Press, For Harriet's Soar, The Feminist Wire, and For Women Who Roar, among others.
& one day you’ll read the lines on my face
know the lawlessness under my skin in my bones
& you’ll know the silence each crevice holds
from the black of my blood to the plaque behind molars
the scars of finding gold. You’ll see me shine
like a glass case of knives
& you’ll know the sharpness of each tooth
how children speak with knotted tongues
how men in power lost control of their hands
how bystanders became politicians.
I tore skin ran across the plains
sought the Pacific rested near redwoods
I am the flowers of west wind.
FUCHSIA | Fuchsia magellanica
Believe me.
My cracked lips & stained tongue
a burning stomach in a no-backbone bedroom
did not deter the swift flight of endurance
the remembrance of sweetness / of survival.
Hummingbirds came once I tasted my
tears yet sometimes I still close my eyes
to the Sun. I see the glaring red
of my florid skin swollen inside
irritated infected from
pesticides the warmth of invasion
of his cold fingers inside.
I cry growl slice arteries with teeth.
I wrestle with the treachery of men until
I twirl prayers into beads of nectar
break the hex of hatred
ground the betrayal into fertile land.
I grow from fingers over lips
the whispers of sssshhhh…don’t tell no body.
Today my mouth like legs rests wide open.
Believe me.
(He knew someone would)
Fuschia first appeared in Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing