Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present Thea Matthews’ poem “American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023” as our first monthly featured poem from a full-length book for Issue 10: Fall 2025. You can find more poetry in their book, GRIME, available from City Lights Publishers.
American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023
For Private Ana Basaldua “Basa” Ruiz
Nearly one in four U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted in the military.
There’s no take it easy.
You toss all night until
you rise. Step foot on grass
cut too short to blow a whistle.
Blotches of dirt chaperone
long rows of bullets, and clouds
glide over shadows, and she?
Well, she was an American girl,
not a balloon or a red ribbon
tied in a bow, not a stick
of gum or a tube of lip balm,
but a woman, twenty years old,
whose skin was smooth as corn flour and hair
the mane of a brown stallion.
She wasn’t U.S.-born,
but my God, she was raised on promises,
promises that if you join
the army, you will have a way,
a way to travel, get an education,
be great, see a great big world,
but see—the deep imprints of combat boots.
Terror hung from a hook
like a hunter’s trophy,
and there were two. Hunter
and prey stay in one trench.
The sergeant came to her room
unannounced
and tried to pry her open.
He would eventually transfer,
but he crept back in her memory
like a rattlesnake slithering
across the base over and over again,
and the soldier—
he found the key to her mind,
leaving her no place to run to.
Beneath the showerhead,
she stared at her bare feet
against the bathroom tiled floor,
wishing to be far out of reach.
She couldn’t feel the water,
only the floor collapsing
into the earth’s core
like waves crashing on the beach.
The soldier was relentless,
and she could not withstand
the feeling any longer,
the feeling of something
that’s so close—
her pulse.
God, it’s so painful,
she moaned.
About the Poem
As a survivor of sexual violence, with family in the U.S. military, I was deeply moved by the documentary I Am Vanessa Guillen and by the case of Private Ana Basaldua Ruiz. I wrote this poem in the voice of both optimism and despair in mind for Ana, weaving in and juxtaposing the lyrics of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl.’ The song’s themes of desperation, wanderlust, and longing are subverted by Ana’s life and tragedy at Fort Cavazos, previously known as Fort Hood, Texas.
Author Bio
Thea Matthews is a poet of African and Indigenous Mexican descent originally from San Francisco, CA. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and a BA in sociology from UC Berkeley. Her poetry has appeared in the Obsidian Lit & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Massachusetts Review, Alta Journal, The New Republic, and others. Her first book, Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press), was chosen for Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry of 2020. In 2023, she was poet in residence at the Museum of African Diaspora, and programming curator at UC Berkeley’s Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. She teaches creative writing, is an editor, and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
From GRIME
GRIME is the underbelly of the city and the dirt found in the human psyche. These poems explore the dichotomous gravity of despair and desire, apathy and protest, defeat and survival. They trace San Francisco’s skyline to encapsulate being born and raised in a metropolis that has grown increasingly strange to its native citizens, even as it serves as a mnemonic for past trauma and death.
Part elegy, part call to resistance, GRIME chronicles Matthews’ childhood growing up in the Tenderloin, amidst the glamour and allure of its drug-fueled street life and the squalor of its poverty and addiction, even as the poems veer off from the autobiographical into portraits and dramatic monologues, on the one hand, and experiments with traditional forms like ghazals and pantoums, on the other. The poems hold grit and anguish in one breath, marrying an unflinching eye to a rare formal assurance. As austerity pushes the margins of each page, in poem after poem, the setting shifts, the characters assume different names, yet every moment interlocks to expose the grime of living in the city.
Yet GRIME is also a story of triumph and resiliency in the face of insurmountable odds, an assertion of the power of poetry in wrestling with grief, addiction, and calamity. It seeks moments of healing based on interpersonal connection and faith. GRIME is a poetics of survival and defiance.
Available now: City Lights Publishers
Contents
Chapbook Poem: When I Was Straight by Dustin Brookshire
“‘When I Was Straight’ prompted me to think about a common queer experience—how most parents assume their children are ‘straight’ and expect their children to live a ‘straight’ life.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023 by Thea Matthews
“[W]eaving in and juxtaposing the lyrics of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl.’ The song’s themes of desperation, wanderlust, and longing are subverted by Ana’s life and tragedy at Fort Cavazos, previously known as Fort Hood, Texas.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
“It seems such a shame that a beautiful location is just gathering dust and overgrowth, and I wanted to lean into the juxtaposition of that.” Read three poems by Bryana Fern along with a few words about “Women on the Wall.”
Bodies in Transition: Sacred & Perishable by Carissa Natalia Baconguis
“There is a muscular intimacy to the ecosystem of these poems, each one of them creating as vivid a world individually as exists in the collection as a whole.” Read Gray Davidson Carroll’s full review.
“In ‘No Breaks’ I was writing about something I hope I never have to experience. … I tried to keep despair at bay and show some defiance and resilience.” Read two poems by Gerald Yelle along with a few words about “No Breaks.”
November ’25: New Staff, Issue Archive & Donations
Read a note from Editor Aiden Hunt about our new Poetry Readers, the additions of an Issue Archive and a Contributor Fund, Fall poetry submissions, and Gaza.
Chapbook Poem: Two egrets at the edge of a tidal marsh by Rebekah Wolman
“Settling on the mirror form opened the way into the parallels between the original image of the egrets, their reflection, and their ambiguous relationship and the shifting, even reversing, roles of an adult daughter and her aging mother…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for November 2025 along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Alexandra Burack
“Subsequent drafts enabled me to … uncover the metaphor of exile, whose meanings are intended to move readers from an experience of alienation to one of discernment of the liberating qualities of outsiderhood.” Read three poems by Alexandra Burack, along with a few words about “To Know Blue From the Color of Snow at Dusk.”
Book Excerpt: Rondo by Yamini Pathak
“The sculpture gardens are located on … the native land of the Lenape people. The poem is a conversation between sculpture, land, and its human and more-than-human inhabitants.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for November 2025, “Rondo” from Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps by Yamini Pathak, along with a few words from the poet.
Two Poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth
“As I shaped the poem, the olive trees became a witness to a deeper experience—to a region’s ongoing, collective pain. It was the land I wanted to make speak in a place where I did not have words.” Read two poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth, along with a few words about “Before.”
A Conversation with Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes
“We wanted something that was alive, highlighted an ever-expanding list of books by these poets, and that will hopefully survive the both of us and flourish under the curation of a fresh set of poets.” Read the full interview about the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook series.
Chapbook Poem: Red Tide by Mary Gilliland
“Reflection, research, a public service announcement, an old Zen koan, and 3 weeks of bicycling for groceries with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth inform ‘Red Tide’.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for December 2025, “Red Tide” from Red Tide at Sandy Bend, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Veronica Tucker
“’You Left the Fridge Open Again’ transforms an ordinary domestic moment into a meditation on tenderness and decay. The open refrigerator becomes a quiet altar, its hum a hymn to what lingers after love’s warmth has cooled.” Read three poems by Veronica Tucker, along with a few words about “You Left the Fridge Open Again.”
Book Excerpt: The Samadhi of Words by Richard Collins
“Zen poets, past and present, who experience deep absorption in the grandeur of this world may even gain wisdom through the way of poetry, Shidō (詩道). This is the samadhi of words.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for December 2025, “The Samadhi of Words” from Stone Nest by Richard Collins, along with a few words from the poet.
December ’25: Pushcart Prize Nominations
Editor Aiden Hunt announces Philly Chapbook Review’s 2026 Pushcart Prize anthology nominations in this editor’s note and provides links to, and a carousel of, the nominated poems.
“From the height of the camel, I could see the ruins of Palmyra and a medieval castle on a hill. Present day Wadi Rum in Jordan has no evidence of an ancient civilization in the desert until one arrives, by car not camel, in Petra.” Read two poems by Sandy Feinstein, our sixth and final biweekly poet of the Fall 2025 issue, along with a few words about “Souvenir.”