All posts by Marsha Mathews

Marsha Mathews is Professor Emerita, Dalton State College, Dalton, GA. During the 1990s, Marsha served as an Ordained Minister in the United Methodist Church. Her poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, The Fourth River Best Writings of the Decade; Delmarva Review; Gargoyle; Raleigh Review; War, Literature & the Arts; and many other fine journals. Mathews has four chapbooks; Growing Up with Pigtails won the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Young Adults. Her first full collection of poetry, BEAUTY BOUND, (Main Street Rag 2019) explores human extremes to attain attractiveness.
Authors I-Q, Poetry 2014-2019

My Daughter’s Black Eye – by Marsha Mathews

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she will not look at me
hurries through the living room
hand covering her face.

I go to her
see it

the eye
raw bruise

pink iris
distorted pupil

puffed almost shut
opening the truth

of her relationship
with her boyfriend.

who did this?

she shakes her head
shame spills

my fault

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Poetry Editor’s Note: October is nationally recognized as Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Image credit: Photography by the staff of Black Celebrity Giving

Authors I-Q, Poetry 2014-2019

Outcry – by Marsha Mathews

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The church with dirty elbows,
whitewashed knees
finally shuts its doors,
sucks in its steeple.
We watch it shrivel.
Bells sway in paroxysms,
chime mute blows.

The sanctuary stiffens.
Pews turn blue.
The altar moans.
No one’s left
to care
if the emeralds and purples
of the stained-glass Christ
weep shards of blood.

 

Image credit: Niki Feijen photograph of an abandoned church in the Netherlands