For Bob Kaufman

When I tell you
I am writing the
Great American Suicide Note,
you sniff my clothes
then leave. You laugh,
scuff dirt, crush pills
on concrete. You snort
headline after headline
in the hidden rooms
of my houndstooth jacket.
You find America—
plasticized, processed, smoking a Marlboro cigarette, the poison
gleams, the glam of starvation,
like Glock to glove,
a red tie claims
he knows what’s best.
A white embroidered dress
sings in a blackout.
It’s not too late to befriend time.
Or is it? A cocktail purse
holds narcotics for a last fix.
No one is kneeling
in a church pew.
Children have antennas
for eyes. As more sirens
choke the air, more satellites
orbit the sky. In a haze,
perverts rip pages out of a bible. Let me tell you,
I won’t miss a thing,
not idols frolicking in the wind
or the bleeding blisters
on the roof of a sun god’s
mouth. I am escaping
from the panic, the sleep,
the hands of SSRIs. Zombies
congest the streets.
The requiem for intellectuals
is buried in a stack
of ballroom chairs.
I can’t say I know
where I am going,
I don’t want to be found.
My name is anonymous.

Contributor Notes

Thea Matthews is the author of GRIME (City Lights Books, 2025) and Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press, 2020), which was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry Books of 2020. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, ZYZZYVA, The Cortland Review, Colorado Review, The Common, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Massachusetts Review, The New Republic, Alta Journal, On the Seawall, among others. Thea attained her MFA from New York University in 2022, and currently teaches at Columbia University. Originally from San Francisco, Thea lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Photo Credit-Coskun Caglayan