by Ellen Kombiyil
by Lizzy 柯 (Ke) Polishan
the horse-girl/cowboy dichotomy wants you
to ride it home for so long it breaks like a heart
in a western, maybe lonesome dove, maybe
some other series, maybe something real.
you ask your lover to unravel: you are given
a toothpick and told to knock yourself out.
at the bottom of the ocean, you learn to eat the unloved
fish first, so you don’t need to watch
every heart break twice. “I built a barn
for my horses and a life for
the last woman who said I love you back,”
your lover writes, to the woman he’s been wanting
to want him for some time. she twists long grass into jewelry
she wears high around her biceps, in the place
you always cover on yourself with a shirt. you don’t mind.
honest. like you, your lover has never wanted anybody,
even her, even you, more than he wanted to feel loved back.
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Lizzy 柯 (Ke) Polishan’s poems appear in Gulf Coast, Passages North, EPOCH, RHINO, Tupelo Quarterly, petrichor., Poet Lore, Rust + Moth, Greensboro Review, Pacifica, and others. She is a Guest Editor at Palette, a Poetry Reader at Psaltery & Lyre, and the Managing Editor at River & South Review. She is the author of A Little Book of Blooms (2020). She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.
by Alexis Rhone Fancher
First off, I was bereft. How could Mary have deceived me? I always thought she was satisfied. I can’t tell you how many all-nighters I pulled, staying up late, reading Masters and Johnson, the skills I’d conquered for her pleasure. What about the G-spot, Mary? She always moans when I find it. Now I have to wonder. Was she faking it? As for that bun in the oven... Who’s responsible? When Mary said God, I laughed. That’s who you’re laying this on? What blasphemy is that! I’m a Jew! A pious one! Surely she could come up with something better than God. Still, I have to admit, Mary has a wild imagination. Covering up a peccadillo with a wild goose tale. Who does she think she’s fooling? Curious, I follow her out to the manger, where the tiny tot’s cradled in a bed made of straw, a blanket tucked neatly around his body. He’s cute, looks a lot like Mary’s dad.
It’s a miracle, Mary says. And the kid’s gonna save us all.
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Alexis Rhone Fancher is an award-winning poet and photographer. Since 2012, she has published ten books of poetry, most recently Erotic: New & Selected, Brazen (both NYQ Books), and Triggered (MacQ Press). Her photo book of 100+ Southern California poets was published in March, 2025 by Moon Tide Press. A multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, Alexis won Best Micro Fiction 2025. She lives in the Mojave Desert. See alexisrhonefancher.com.
by Jude Marr
by Yukyung Katie Kim
ten kindergarten children pushing one another on the swings, chuckling
about how Sarah unhooked a trout and let it swim back–
nine Earl Gray tea bags strewn along Hampshire Street, shimmering
oil sheens of cinnamon, jasmine, citrus reaching for the storm drain–
eight mink jackets piled on a bench in front of a korean barbeque
joint, ingrained with The Jacobson’s in bold verdana, forest-green–
seven toyotas lined up, single file like hybrid ducklings, dawdling
from Sunderland to Amherst, shadowing black labradoodles on the sidewalk–
six french tourists with polyester bandanas brushing more sweat
than even the sky’s cotton balls have held; the Sahara, half a world away–
five Indian elephants barreling through naked branches, matting the feathers
of downed birds, fellow victims, pebbled with their ancestors’ wrinkles–
four drenched cigarette butts twirling around in the Deerfield River, morphing
into baby tadpoles, flaunting their orange tails, their pale bodies–
three bald heads, checkered overalls, lattice hats
plowing the withered mouths of weeds and browning begonias–
two ladybugs, one hind leg longer than the other, carrying
my diaspora of pomegranate seeds down my right arm—
one barn brushed with the dampness of autumn leaves, tarred
with ashes from last night’s bonfire, still smelling of roadkill and rubber–
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Yukyung Katie Kim is a writer, visual artist, and musician from Deerfield, Massachusetts. Her work has appears in Altered Reality, DePaul's Blue Book, and Roanoke Review, among others. She is an alumna of the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, the Juniper Institute for Young Writers, and the Ellipsis Writing Workshops.
by Maria Surricchio
—Eavan Boland
One hovers, head bent sharply down—
strains with waiting for the other
pushing up with such force
its whole body seems to rise
into its chest with the thrust, tailfeathers
tapering long and slender below. Swollen
and filling with blood, my son’s new tattoo
of two swallows he says
are his grandparents. Were they like this—
so muscular an ache as they reached
for each other? My son only knew my mother
in perpetual motion, her small, darting
body. Smiling from photos, my father
appears calm, still, but does my son see
what I did, even as a child: the restlessness
he checked for the life he didn’t want
in a gray country he didn’t love? And more—
how it took everything she had
to be always moving toward him.
And for him, to stay in place.
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Maria Surricchio is originally from the UK and now lives near Boulder, Colorado. A life-long lover of poetry, she began writing in 2020 after a long marketing career. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in Blackbird, Salamander, Poet Lore, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Comstock Review, and elsewhere. She has a BA in Modern Languages from Cambridge University and holds an MFA from Pacific University.
by Patricia Clark
by Allison Zhang
She says: names are rivers.
Once you cross,
you can’t swim back.
I think of how she changed hers
on a plane between continents.
Left half of it floating
somewhere over the Pacific.
When I was born,
she gave me a name
light enough to carry
through customs.
Now it drapes
like a borrowed coat
across my shoulders.
I want a name
thick with salt
and hard consonants.
A name that tastes
like the village
she never speaks of.
____________________________________________________________
Allison Zhang is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. An immigrant and bilingual in English and Mandarin, she explores language, memory, identity, and resilience shaped by migration. Her work appears in the Live Poets Society of New Jersey and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review. Recognized by The New York Times and Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, she authored An Everlasting Bond, honored by the BookFest Spring Awards. She enjoys hiking with her twin sister.
by M.B. McLatchey
It's #tbt! In honor of our 10th anniversary, we are celebrating our staff members by re-running their work from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!
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"If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is
somewhat of a burden." —Mark Zuckerberg
In the cave, our histories are shadows
on a wall; our memories rote lessons
that flicker and mutate. Fall and spring,
then and now, captured and interchanged.
Friezes like post cards sculpted to ornament
the grotto, endure, resist decay.
When the shadows dance, we point, open
our mouths, as if for a split second, something
shifts, recalibrates. A glimpse of fire and lathe—
and shadow makers. Forms beyond hope.
Ideas like sirens singing. Cracks in a wall
that luminate, hint at another source: rivers,
flora and bursts of color, starlings with iridescent
wings, shrubs whose roots finger through mud
for something to drink. A world too fluid to dangle
from rod and string. How could we want its ranges, moon,
its chorus marking dawn, its feathered swirl confusing
predators, its messenger’s glad song? Why should we
mind the tether anchoring us; the flame that fixes seasons,
stages night and day, that orients us frontward, ever
frontward, and keeps the constellations in their place?
____________________________________________________________
An educator, writer, and poet, M.B. McLatchey is the author of six books, including the award-winning titles The Lame God (Utah State University Press), Smiling at the Executioner (Kelsay Books), and Beginner’s Mind (Regal House). Her poetry has been published nationally and internationally and has won several awards, including the American Poet Prize. Recently serving for ten years as Florida’s Poet Laureate for Volusia County, M.B. currently serves as Chancellor for the Florida State Poets Association, Ambassador to the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Poetry Reader for SWWIM Every Day. M.B. earned her graduate degree in Comparative Literature at Harvard University and teaches classical literature at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Visit her at mbmclatchey.com.
by Linda Laderman
by January Gill O’Neil
From the freezer, my daughter removes
a gallon bag of dull green scraps, plops them
into boiling water, and watches them simmer
into a funk of vegetable blood.
She understands reduction, appreciates
the economics of brine, what it means
not to waste nor want, the papery onions
disappearing before her eyes.
In the kitchen, everything gets an afterlife,
given enough time and the right touch
on a chilled February evening. Lauryn Hill
spins a groove on the turntable singing
about how everything is everything
as the greens cook down, reduced to
a silky soup, the soupy leavings discarded.
What’s left she pours into a blue and white bowl,
steam swirling above the rim. How easily
my daughter turns nothing into something.
This humble dish, ladling what time delivers,
needs croutons. Maybe some lemon zest.
____________________________________________________________
January Gill O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University and the author of Glitter Road, Rewilding, Misery Islands, and Underlife, all published by CavanKerry Press. The former executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, her poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series, The Nation, and Poetry, among others. She currently serves as the 2022-2025 board chair of AWP.
by Jia-Rui Cook
More open windows on a summer night. More
coolness from the tongue of a conch shell
& warmth from a towel left for hours in the sun
& New Orleans growl in art-museum jazz. More
shoes with the heels worn out & cross-hatched
sidewalks under fan palm trees & star nurseries
blooming through my daughters’ mouths. More close-ups
of faces in photographs of cities getting bombed
& study of which direction their eyes are looking.
More light that can escape from black holes.
More baby blue-belly lizards scooting away from boots
& making it to the shadowed underside of rocks. More
thread for pants slashed at the knees & crabgrass
that can nose through astroturf. Bring on the live voltage
of the future tense to shake load-bearing beams.
Show me a kind of math that can account for the cruelty
a hurricane whips down when it meets land & the beauty
of the blush-lit spun-sugar clouds it leaves behind
& my need to remember the pummeling so I can harden
when the next storm comes but still
leave me the ability to round up.
____________________________________________________________
Jia-Rui Cook is a Chinese-American writer, editor, and producer in Los Angeles. Once a staff writer at the L.A. Times and the news events and projects lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she is the senior communications officer at the California Wellness Foundation. Her poetry has recently appeared in Alta Journal, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, Mom Egg Review, Missouri Review, and Puerto del Sol. Jia-Rui can be found on Instagram @funjiable.
by Summer Hardinge
by Catherine Abbey Hodges
It's #tbt! In honor of our 10th anniversary, we are celebrating our staff members by re-running their work from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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by Buffy Shutt
She takes us flying.
Easter weekend, we wear matching outfits.
I drop my yellow sweater in the Potomac.
She leaves my sister in a cherry tree at the Tidal Basin.
Mother flies low so I can scoop up my sweater.
Two tourists rescue my sister from the crook of the cherry tree.
My sister is covered in blossoms.
She never forgives our bird.
We are grade schoolers.
Our mother is eight musical notes.
Not an ear worm exactly, more an anthem.
She unfurls each morning.
In our teens she is a book.
The cover is purple.
She stashes it out of sight.
For me to know and for you to find out.
I like her best as a bird.
She is not home. She is fast.
She is love
gone off course.
I am water gushing over her burial mound.
I haven’t been solid in weeks.
I swim in her rectangle until
my sister orders me to stop.
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Buffy Shutt, a former movie marketing executive, is a poet, mother, and grandmother. Her work appears in various journals. Buffy’s debut poetry collection, Recruit to Deny, is available now. She is also the author of Memos from the [20th] 21st Century, a chapbook of poems disguised as corporate memos, and of the chapbook animal magnetism. Buffy graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where she met her best friend, her husband, and her writing self.
by Jordan E. Franklin
by Dré Pontbriand
My mother doesn’t eat bread: she kneads and picks at her body’s
soft rolls, cursing the mirror for not being a time machine. What good
would going back in time do? She’s always been too much. It’s 1999.
Mid-astronaut craze. My classmates are set on making their way
into space; I’m thinking of ways to take up less. I’d get claustrophobic
in the rocket ship, shatter a window, implode or freeze. Might be worth it
though, to land on the ground more lightly—the weightlessness.
Junior year: every morning, after every meal, before bed—I pray.
Bare knees on a marble pew, a toilet bowl confessional. I take
my socks off last, rip out my hair elastic. Lyle asks why I carry
a sweater everywhere I go no matter the season. As a kid, I was
the queen of snow angels in mid-December, Mom chasing me
with scarf and mittens. The suggestion of a breeze freezes
me in place, so I stay in bed. Showers aren’t for clearing away
the day. There is no day, just softened shivers. My father says:
Now you’ve done it, you’re a perfect weight. I eat leaves
for every meal that isn’t breath and have a panic attack
in the bathroom at Ivy’s dinner party. I don’t have to go
outside to see stars. I just stand up. Freud said dreams are windows
into our subconscious desires. I’m smoke blown through delicate
lips. I lower the bong, envious as gaseous gold evanesces into
the ether. There’s a silk carpet on the yacht I work on. We brush
it to erase footprints even apparitions leave behind. When I walk,
I don’t leave a trace. I did it. I’m nothing. I’m
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Dré is a queer Mexican-French Canadian poet, cantadora, and alchemy enthusiast. She also writes in her mother tongues, Spanish and French. Her work has been published in Gnashing Teeth and Arte y Literatura Hispanocanadiense Anthology. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection.
by Iris Rosenberg
I keep my troubles in my hands. A curse
has made them stiff as catcher's mitts. You see
I cannot bend or flex. No pills for this.
Still, others have it worse. And in my dreams
I am Titian. My hand the perfect brush,
slowly circling your nipples, your belly.
First with red, then green. An old artist’s trick
to make skin glow. We’ve seen for ourselves rooms
filled with long-fingered Madonnas divined
in paint the color of olives. Heaven,
how much the eye can hold—even as it
searches for more. Like my hands every night,
longing to draw you into my arms. Though,
as if alone, you lie facing the wall.
____________________________________________________________
Iris Rosenberg writes poetry and fiction in New York City. She has an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute and is a former poetry reviewer for Library Journal. Her work will soon appear or has been featured in L’Esprit, Thimble, Rust & Moth, Right Hand Pointing, and Club Plum, among other literary journals.
by Elizabeth Sylvia
It's #tbt! In honor of our 10th anniversary, we are celebrating our staff members by re-running their work from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!
____________________________________________________________
After watching the documentary Free Solo
I keep thinking of you measuring the walls,
saying you’re allowed one question every day
about furnishing the condo Alex has just bought,
or when you asked him in the front seat of his van
(saying you’re allowed one question every day)
if you were someone worth not dying for
or, when you asked him in the front seat of his van
to rate his happiness, how blank he looked.
If you were someone worth not dying for
you would be someone more than just a girl
to rate his happiness. How blank he looked
remitting your devotion and your hope.
You would be someone more than just a girl
if you were loved by someone far out on the ledge,
remitting your devotion and your hope
with the reflective glow of his cold greatness.
If you were loved by someone far out on the ledge,
his hands would always hope for stone
with the reflective glow of his own greatness
before him on the mountain face.
Alex’s hands will always hope for stone,
the form that excellence must take for him;
before him on the mountain face
your passions can’t seem anything but trivial.
The form that excellence must take for him
makes people on the ground seem tiny specks,
our passions can’t seem anything but trivial.
Heights and solitude like that
make people on the ground seem tiny specks.
Don’t come to see yourself
from heights and solitude like that
as if your soul were no more than a dot.
Don’t come to see yourself
as little. Things you love
as if your soul were no more than a dot
are great things even in their commonness.
As little things we love
are requited, they become
great things, even in their commonness:
Those joys and cares tie us together.
Requited, they become
the solid rock to build a life upon,
those joys and cares that tie us together,
shared work, shared devotion.
The solid rock to build a life upon
isn’t furnishing the condo Alex has just bought,
but shared work, shared devotion.
I keep thinking of you measuring the wall.
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Elizabeth Sylvia is the author of three books of poetry: Scythe (2026), forthcoming from River River Books; My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties (2025) from Ballerini Books Press; and None But Witches (2022), winner of the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. She has received fellowships from the New York Public Library, the West Chester University Poetry Center and the Longleaf Writers Conference and was the winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize. Elizabeth began reading for SWWIM Every Day in 2023.
by Jennifer Wheelock