Louise Mathias grew up in a small village in Suffolk, England, and later, Los Angeles. She attended the University of Southern California where she received her BA in Creative Writing. Her first book,
Lark Apprentice, won the 2003 New Issues Poetry Prize. Poems have appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly, Triquarterly, Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Hunger Mountain, Epoch, SHADE, The Journal, Green Mountains Review, Slope, Verse Daily, and others. She is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, The Atlanta Review, and The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. She lives in Long Beach, California and works as a grant writing and fundraising consultant.Subterranean
To move in a woman, he says, is to move
underneath
& the mind shuts off (long gasp
that sounds like sorrow). It's no crime to want to live
where the sun beats down
with the conviction of a drug
& it isn't a crime to love
the pitch-black curve of the ever-elusive tunnel,
the apocalyptic white of her thigh—
the swing of hair, long past jasmine and
on its way to blithe.
Long ago I also reached to touch a woman's hair.
It scared me half
to death. Its rustling, oceanic
dreaming.