It may twist and turn, fall back on itself and start again, stumble over an infinite series of hindering rocks, but at last the river must answer the call to the sea. – Howard Thurman

In her debut collection, Unearth [The Flowers], Thea Matthews offers to the world a botanical garden in which each flower shines with the vision of healing. Grappling with issues such as child abuse, sexual assault, and racism in the United States, Matthews channels a voice which sounds both distinctly individual, yet powerfully communal through every poem.

Don’t we all have places to go like these? Wet
and stuffed with life, warm, not yet growing spots,

these great and hollowed grenades. I let myself coil in.
Like any good blanket that’s ever swaddled me safe,

The Great Plains of the United States have always signaled one thing to me: possibility. Growing up on flat lands, surrounded at all times by an unencumbered 360 degree view does nothing if not instill a sense of the possible.