Matthew Henry

"White Woman Freedom" [CNF] in Identity Theory

She told me to eat, pray, live, laugh, and love. To be #Blessed. To appropriate dances like no one was watching the Black girls on TikTok. To vision board the fridge and every wall, with inspirational quotes giving no credit to the Black women on Instagram. Stolen, like their hair, lips, ass, and tan.

As Paul Mooney said, “Everybody wants to be a nigger, but nobody wants to be a nigger.”


My creative nonfiction piece “White Woman Freedom” was published in Identity Theory.

“Okonkwo returns to Umuofia” at Menino Arts Center

My poem “Okonkwo returns to Umuofia” was on display as part of the Menino Arts Center’s exhibit Images Then Words (January 9 – February 14, 2025), which featured the work of 53 Word Artists responding to 61 pieces by 47 Image Artists. Images juried & curated by Sasja Lucas. Words curated by Holly Guran. View the virtual 3D gallery here.

“Okonkwo returns to Umuofia” is a doubly ekphrastic work, responding both to Sasja Lucas’ The Wrestling Match (pictured below) and Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart.

Sasja Lucas

The Wrestling Match

120mm film photography

8 x 10 in (h x w)

Okonkwo returns to Umuofia

seven years was a long time to be away from one’s clan,

but he would return to his fatherland and fan his fame—

a bush-fire beneath the stiff harmattan wind. he had a plan:

reclaim his land, rebuild his compound, regain his titles and place

among the egwugwu. but Okonkwo was not prepared

for what he found. his motherland was good to him in exile,

kind. but Mbanta was not filled with warriors. they were weak.

how else could they fall from the grand, old ways—the bonds

of kinship—and allow an abominable religion to fester

like an un-lanced boil or an untreated bout of iba? his Umuofia

was feared by her neighbors, known for her power in war

and in magic. her priests and medicine men possessing

the most potent rites and fetishes, the shrine of agadi-nwayi

among them. thus Okonkwo could not believe Obierika’s reports

of home. but by the second market week back, he began to see

the truth. how his brothers strut across the village square

in white shirts and dusky trousers, abandoning the loincloth

and wrappers worn since the founder of the clan engaged a spirit

of the wild for seven days and nights. how his kinsmen drink

palm wine tapped in Umuru from glass bottles, their gourds

and skulls gathering dust on their obi walls. how titled men

allow themselves to be dragged by kotma to the white man’s court,

to be beaten by his perverted justice. how even some elders dance

to the rhythm of the white man’s religion, deaf to the ekwe

and ogene talking across villages, across the clan’s history.

how supposed men stride—hatted heads held high—to and from

their abomination, their church, in the Evil Forest, believing

their Jesu Kristi will save them from the wrath of Ekwensu and Ani,

Amadiora and Chukwu. it was easier when the converts were only

efulefu—sheaths taken into battle, machetes forgotten at home,

the excrement of the clan lapped up by this mad-dog faith. but now

even Ogbuefis have severed their anklets, become as agbala, to join

the Christians’ meager feast of their god-man’s murdered body.

something must be done. but surrounded by so many such as these…

as cold water poured on a roaring fire, he stifles a sorrow, a grief

he has not known since the last days of the son whose name will not

be remembered in the clan and the one who will. his fist aches,

reflexively clenching around the machete resting inside his obi door.

he will shake out his smoked raffia shirt, examine his feathered headgear

and shield to satisfaction. he turns for home as if on springs, heels

hardly touching the ground. as the elders say,

whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight,

know that something is after its life.

Two poems in Lily Poetry Review

I am very proud that two of my ekphrastic poems were published in the latest issue of Lily Poetry Review , guest edited by Anthony Walton and Heather Treseler.


"The Most Dangerous Game" is after a poem by Candice Kelsey (and the short story) of the same name

“La Voix du Silence" is after a painting by Rene Magritte of the same name.

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“when asked what it’s like being a poet” in Whale Road Review & Nominated for a Pushcart

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My poem “when asked what it’s like being a poet” is is based on one of my favorite poems to teach, “The Art of Disappearing” by Naomi Shihab Nye. It is published in the latest issue of Whale Road Review, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize!

"Explaining 'the patron saint of suicide'" published in Nixes Mate

My creative nonfiction piece “Explaining ‘the patron saint of suicide’” was published in Nixes Mate Review.

As the title suggests, this is an essay that braids the stories of

  1. writing the poem “the patron saint of suicide” (originally published in Cola Literary Review, but also appearing in said the Frog to the scorpion),

  2. how well I disassociate while doing poetry readings, and

  3. a night when I didn’t disassociate while reading “the patron saint of suicide.”

"Perspective" published in After the Art

I wrote a poem entitled “notice five things” (which is currently a finalist for the 2024 Beals Prize for Poetry (more on that later) based on my visits to art museums while composing a manuscript in progress. I also wrote a creative nonfiction version of the events (sort of, kind of), which was just published in After the Art.

“Perspective” is now out in the world.

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Award (almost) announcements

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Two close but no cigar announcements:

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Selections from Selling the World (my ekphrastic manuscript in progress") was longlisted for the Kinsman Avenue Publishing African Diaspora Award. My poems “Adoration of the Magi,” “Bust of Akhenaten,” “homegoing,” “The Moorish Chief,” & “Quilt” will all published in a forthcoming anthology.

II.

The Third Renunciation was a finalist for the New England Poetry Club Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. This is the second time I’ve been a finalist for this prize.