Airea D. Matthews – Michigan Quarterly Review

Airea D. Matthews

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Black Ecstatic Ode

Praise to the father holding his sleeping daughter on the 52nd
Street trolley
To the daughter sleeping through the pothole thrum
Praise to the diabetic with shorn feet and sugarcane blood
To the shooting nerve through the left hip and lower spine
To those flying gods on their routes
Praise to the red-headed Rasta and his ganja-laced T-shirt
To the Vietnam vet at Cass Corridor holding his sign
To the sign which reads: “I’m not homeless, I’m just Black”
Praise to the barbers trying to calm the fatherless boys in their chairs
To the mothers trying not to overhear this soothing
To soothing

Black Ecstatic Ode Read More »

Praise to the father holding his sleeping daughter on the 52nd
Street trolley
To the daughter sleeping through the pothole thrum
Praise to the diabetic with shorn feet and sugarcane blood
To the shooting nerve through the left hip and lower spine
To those flying gods on their routes
Praise to the red-headed Rasta and his ganja-laced T-shirt
To the Vietnam vet at Cass Corridor holding his sign
To the sign which reads: “I’m not homeless, I’m just Black”
Praise to the barbers trying to calm the fatherless boys in their chairs
To the mothers trying not to overhear this soothing
To soothing

Meet our Contributors, MQR Summer 2019 Issue

WILLIAM BREWER is the author of I Know Your Kind, a winner of the National Poetry Series. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Sewanee Review, and other publications. Formerly a Stegner Fellow, he is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. FLEDA BROWN’s

Meet our Contributors, MQR Summer 2019 Issue Read More »

WILLIAM BREWER is the author of I Know Your Kind, a winner of the National Poetry Series. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Sewanee Review, and other publications. Formerly a Stegner Fellow, he is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. FLEDA BROWN’s

MQR Issue 58:3, Summer 2019

Nonfiction Susan Fox Rogers: The Other Leopold Jillian Weiss: Home and Spectacle Daniel Vollaro: The Lookout Tree Fiction Sarah Kokernot: Debut James Leaf: Team Wristband Kirsten Sundberg Lustrum: Revision Mi-Kyung Shin: La Dolce Vita Ashley Wurzbacher: Happy Like This Poetry William Brewer: Alloy Fleda Brown: Ode on Bees Jane Hirshfield: Falcon Circe Maia (trans. by

MQR Issue 58:3, Summer 2019 Read More »

Nonfiction Susan Fox Rogers: The Other Leopold Jillian Weiss: Home and Spectacle Daniel Vollaro: The Lookout Tree Fiction Sarah Kokernot: Debut James Leaf: Team Wristband Kirsten Sundberg Lustrum: Revision Mi-Kyung Shin: La Dolce Vita Ashley Wurzbacher: Happy Like This Poetry William Brewer: Alloy Fleda Brown: Ode on Bees Jane Hirshfield: Falcon Circe Maia (trans. by

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