In this city
you dig deep enough
you’ll find the bones
smell dead skin rotting
feel the stiffness of limbs
transplanted pickpocketed
in a stream of stolen promises
In this city
where the Pacific cries
bodies buried in missionaries
street kids disappear spirits linger
long welfare lines methadone clinics
and a drunk middle-aged pimp asks
a pretty young girl “how old are you?”
as the pick-up line to say she’s pretty
too pretty pretty enough to sell
hands are always lurking for their
next prey : a new sap from faulty roots
of beetle-infected trees
time quickly wears on the skin
as money pushes City Hall
ghettos to high rises look the same
with tech valleys man-made
pharmaceuticals a high man-made
no one ever wants to come down
in this city
grass wrestles with the trees
and the crows and sparrows laugh
at the debauchery of it all
In this city
you see it all
Ascetic Protest
cracked
callused
feet listen
to the cries inside my belly
slowly
bleed the walk of the ascetic
denounce oil and sugar
refractory potbellies in suits
the protest is now
is tantamount
is the new blood
new peace
magnanimity
the revolution
from within
is within
each cell each step each fight
against an avaricious oligarchy–––
a government who can never
control
the perception thoughts ideas
of a human being
as much as they want to
[keep
walking
they can’t find
you]
Thea Matthews earned her BA in Sociology at UC Berkeley where she studied and taught June Jordan’s program Poetry for the People. Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Acentos Review, The Rumpus, For Women Who Roar magazine, and others. Her first collection of poems Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press) will be available in spring 2020. www.theamatthews.com
The Los Angeles Press 