Publications
Poetry
Mathews’ poetry explores the themes of Black womanhood (queer and otherwise), the spectacular demolition of the nuclear family, and sifting for pearls in generational trauma.
better hands
Nailah’s debut poetry collection now out from Newfound.
Summary
Who breaks the cycle, and what does breaking it cost? Winner of the 2023 Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, better hands eulogizes legacies of violence, underscored by a fervent desire of becoming. Mathews guides readers across and through “the infinity pink” in poems that drip a reverence tinged with resentment. Their debut chapbook engages myth, nature, and the body to honor the past and summon uncertain, ecstatic futures beyond.
Praise
“The eye—the I—is rigorously generous across these poems. They don’t attempt to rebuild a world or define a world, rather they do something more powerful and difficult: they dare an intimate lexicon and imagery wild and energetic enough to bare the overwhelm of the unknown world and our relationship to and relationships within it. The lines flicker, from light to dark, a wet shine, an earthen darkness, a scar, a seed, the body and body of language, bordering the ecstatic. Images tremble and transform, become both familiar and surprising, under the pressure of the speakers’ unrelenting desires and I was lucky to find myself wandering the blur between memory, moment, and the impossibility of what might happen next. Within these poems is a bold embrace of sensuality and how language can be our portal to collapse the temporal and spatial hierarchies of ancestor and descendant—the poems seem to say: we are who we are from and we become what becomes us next.”
—Natalie Diaz, author of Postcolonial Love Poem
Journals and Zines
Hoxie Gorge Press - Issue 7 (2023)
Poem Featured:
Ode to relapse and recovery
Rigorous -
Volume 7, Issue 2 (July 2023)
Poem’s Featured:
invocation against psychosurgery
negrita
homecoming
New Note - Summer Issue (July 2023)
Poem Featured:
Elegy for icarus + isaac
Lolwe (November 2022)
Poems Featured:
Night thief
moonstuck
aurorabore|atlas
Hennepin Review - Issue 6 (June 2022)
Poem Featured:
Zira
Vermillion - Flash Issue 6 (Spring 2022)
Poem Featured:
Cousin
Outlook Springs - Issue 7 (January 2021)
Poems Featured:
Earwig.
invocation
frances
Penumbra Literary and Art Journal - Black Voices and Experiences Online Exclusive Series (August 2020)
Poem Featured:
cradle
Hey, I’m Alive Magazine - Issue 4 (August 2020)
Poems Featured:
Seattle
Atë
southern belle
Tilde~ A Literary Journal - Issue 5 (Summer 2020)
Poem Featured:
hanlon’s razor
Awake by Lucky Jefferson - Issue 1 (Summer 2020)
Poem Featured:
Blackbird or stone
Passenger Journal - Volume 1 Issue 2 (Summer) 2020
Poem Featured:
[untitled] (after Tomaz Salamun)
Serendipity Magazine by the Black Lesbian Literary Collective - Issue 5 (Summer 2020)
Poem Featured:
Fathersong
Prizes
Talking With Trees Poetry Competition
plants & poetry
1st Place Poem, “Old ass tree”
The Anzaldúa Poetry Prize
Newfound
Winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, Nailah’s chapbook better hands was published by Newfound in the spring of 2025.