Airea D. Matthews

3 weeks ago | thebaffler.com | Alina Stefanescu |Niela Orr |Airea D. Matthews |Maura Mahoney

a gender-modified golden shovel of Revelations 17:6And how the pros sparkled! I thought I’d play this game bestwhen playing my betters. Up close to the net, pivotless,I felt myself most alive when being slaughtered. Everyonesaw the shame, how swiftly it came to its descendant. Dark heirsthen cookies in a star tin. I licked the sweetness from each surface. I thought I could handle it. Maybe a teeny tinge evenwondered.

Sep 20, 2023 | adimagazine.com | Airea D. Matthews

Airea D. Matthews’ first collection of poems is the critically acclaimed Simulacra, which received the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The collection explores  longing, desire, and inheritance with power, insight, and intense emotion.

Jul 20, 2023 | harpersbazaar.com | Airea D. Matthews

It was the summer of 1977. Barbara Millicent Roberts wasn’t quite out of her teens when she accompanied my father and me to my first backroom poker game. I was a shy but precocious five-year-old who was along for whatever ride my parents were on. My father was a mess of a charming man who elicited fealty through heavy-handed means or flat-out cheating—“the hustle,” as he called it. For him, there was no higher god than money, and between his joblessness and addictions, that god often fell silent.