by Talia Pinzari
by Cat Dixon
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!
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The vent whistles and blows the papers from the desk to the floor—all those checks that need to be signed, all those welcome letters to be mailed, the return address label page missing an entire row. The carpet—littered with eraser dandruff, bent paper clips and crumbs from my Poptart— needs to be vacuumed. The filing cabinet with its open mouth calls, file, file, organizethis shit. Instead, I slip the Leonard Cohen CD into the computer. “First We Take Manhattan” begins and I dust and vacuum and wipe. The window sill is filled with dead flies and grit. The lever on the office chair is caked in dust. The blessing bags for the homeless are piled underneath the table—all their strings knotted together. When the doorbell rings, and the man asks for help, I hand him four bags instead of one—too lazy to untwine them. He says, “I don’t need all this,” and I think, none of us do.
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Cat Dixon is the author of What Happens in Nebraska (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2022) along with six other poetry chapbooks and collections. She works full time at a funeral home and she’s a poetry editor with The Good Life Review. Recent poems published in Thimble Lit Mag, Poor Ezra’s Almanac, and Moon City Review.
by Bex Hainsworth
by Alison Prine
to hold stillness
inside the sadness
to hold rain
inside the dust
to hold the girl
who cries on the stairs
and the dream
of the blackbird
and then the blackbird
of the dream
to hold the cold face
of the clock
the late asters
of last summer
to hold the bruise
of the rain cloud
to hold the dust cloud
and the ash cloud
and the choking cloud
of doubt
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Alison Prine’s latest collection of poems, Loss and Its Antonym (Headmistress Press, 2024), won the 2023 Sappho’s Prize in Poetry. Her debut poetry collection, Steel (Cider Press Review, 2016), was named a finalist for the 2017 Vermont Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Five Points, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, and others. She lives and works in Burlington, Vermont. See alisonprine.com.
by Rasma Haidri
Perhaps some part of me still believes
I will live on in my children’s children
and their children, still believes there will be children
solid as green glass, as dark and bright,
sturdy as bone grown from the liquid void
of hope, of want, and need. I mean
the need to love, which is not need at all
but the opposite. Whatever the opposite of need is,
I believe in that.
There is a sprig of lavender in a green glass bowl
on my white-painted window sill. I believe
in the fertile green of the clifftop trees
behind the bowl, outside my window. I believe
these things know each other, trees, bowl,
that both belong to the one solid world
I am passing through. They belong and will remain,
and one day a girl child will cup the bowl
in her two hands at the foot of those trees and
laugh, because something will be funny,
something will be a joy, the day will be green
and the girl, the girl will not know
I saw her there. Already today I saw her
and the tiny womb deep in her belly.
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Rasma Haidri is a South Asian Norwegian-American poet, the author of Blue Like Apples (Rebel Satori) and As If Anything Can Happen (Kelsay Books). Her writing has been widely anthologized and appeared in many journals including Rattle, Fourth Genre, Action Spectacle, Prairie Schooner, River Teeth, and Phoebe. She lives with her wife on a Norwegian seacoast island. See rasma.org.
by Bonnie Auslander
by Marcia J. Pradzinski
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!
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Let his body down in our
grainy ribbons of light
along the bones of me.
On the ground, come morning the grasses will genuflect
with a dozen swirling constellations.
How silently a heart pivots on its hinge—
silent as the moment before the world was.
Eyes closed,
he falls into darkness,
receding from my grasp—
a person can die of motherhood.
Cento Sources: David Caddy, Kwame Davis, Dorianne Laux, Alison Croggon, Cynthia Brackett Vincent, Marcia Hurlow, Jane Hirshfield, Elvis Alves, Hedy Habra, Louis Gallo, Karen Bowles, Sage Cohen
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Marcia J. Pradzinski writes memoir, poetry, and fiction. She’s working on a memoir about raising a child with a disability, and has short pieces published on that topic featured in Overcoming (a 2013 anthology), Woodcrest, Kaleidoscope, and Harmony. She’s published two books of poetry: Left Behind (Finishing Line Press 2015) and As One Day Slips Out of the Shoe of Another (Kelsay Books 2021). She has a short story published in Meaningful Conflicts (a 2023 anthology). She lives in Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and enjoys watching for cardinals and woodpeckers in the neighborhood.
by Laura Adrienne Brady
by Sarah Carson
When the dog sinks her dull teeth
into the down of the rabbit,
we say She must have really wanted
that one.
Blood lust, we call it. Carnal.
Both the meat &
the pain it suffered—
Tender. Raw.
Oh, we moan.
We keen.
Fall to our knees
& kiss the muzzle.
The empty chamber
of her open mouth—
weapon & instrument
of affection.
Killer, we call her.
We feed her bones
from our own plates.
Good girl, we say.
What a good girl.
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Sarah Carson is the author of poems, short stories, and essays that have appeared in such places as Brevity, Guernica, The Missouri Review, and DIAGRAM, as well as the full-length poetry collection, How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan (Persea Books). You can read more of her work at stuffsarahwrote.com.
by Cynthia Marie Hoffman
I threw my back out reaching for the knife
to cut the waffles for my kid
before school. My kid’s a teen already
but still scared of the closet. I’m not
one to talk. I scramble up the stairs at night
when the living room goes dark. What kind of mother
would I be if I didn’t hold on
to the things that make my kid a kid? I let go
of my own dreams, settled for the middle
of the choir, though I wanted
to be a rock star. Did you know
some butterflies have air in the veins in their wings?
My kid learned that in seventh grade,
along with some introductory Spanish.
I’ve been to Spain, where I could understand
everything said to me
but couldn’t form a sentence of my own
out of nothing. Each night I open the door
to affirm the composition of the closet—
more empty space than axe murderer.
Could I fight off an axe with this
kitchen injury and my bad wrist from
lugging the laundry? My idol is a glam
rocker in makeup and platform heels. He reminds me
I’d wanted to live a creative life. These days,
why bother with lipstick? I pour syrup on the same
breakfast my kid has eaten since preschool. My brain
is air. The heaviest thing in my body is my heart.
At a party years ago, I sang one song with a band
and they rushed the bridge into the final verse. I didn’t even
get to sing all the words I knew. Each night, I tuck my kid
in bed though tucking isn’t welcomed anymore. I’m reprimanded
for making sure the quilt is pressed between the mattress
and the wall. But if I let the cold get in, then tell me
what kind of mother would I be?
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Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently the OCD memoir in prose poems, Exploding Head. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. She has essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere, and poems in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI. See cynthiamariehoffman.com.
by Allison Zaczynski
My roommate wants
a different version of me—
one who doesn’t leave
her hearing aids on the charger
when she makes her morning coffee.
I’d like if she didn’t see me
as only my missing parts.
Am I even missing parts anyway?
My hearing aids are just accessories.
Extra. As a child, I chose them in beige.
I wanted them to camouflage
into my body, even though they forced
my ears into elfin protrusion.
Now, I decorate them with holographic stickers.
I wear my hair pulled back
in butterfly clips.
I run into Ilya Kaminsky
at a smoothie shop in Harvard Square
an hour after he signs
my book at Woodberry.
And every morning,
I return to my room with my coffee.
I sit at my desk, let my cat inspect the mug.
Write with the silence of my ears,
listen only to my thoughts.
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Allison Zaczynski (she/her) is a deaf poet. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her poems have been included in Epistemic Lit, The Hooghly Review, Hog River Press, Yoga Journal, and Freshwater Poetry Journal. Allison placed twice in the Asnuntuck Community College Student Poetry Contest, winning third place in 2011, judged by Sue Ellen Thompson, and an honorable mention in 2012 judged by former Connecticut Poet Laureate Dick Allen.
by Kyle Potvin
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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I have survived the darts of winter icing my face
and scrubbed mud from the carpet all spring.
I have rejoiced at the sky turned bowl-like and blue
and studied the family of fox living beneath our forsythia.
And yet you do not appear, as you always do,
your purple palms upraised.
The spectacle of fireworks does not entice you,
nor the young blueberries about to burst
from their tight pods.
The tall stalks swish a strange summons,
first casual, then insistent. Still,
you do not come.
I can't explain this sadness.
All I know is that since I came to this place,
I have relied on you to open, so that each July,
I can place your stems in the guest room
for my mother, who, ill and slowing,
has yet to tell me if she will arrive.
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Kyle Potvin’s full-length poetry collection is Loosen (Hobblebush Books, 2021). Her chapbook, Sound Travels on Water, won the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award, and her poem “After the Biopsy” won The Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry 2024—Sonnet Award. Kyle’s poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Ecotone, SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily, and The New York Times. She is a peer reviewer for Whale Road Review.
by Jennifer Saunders
After David Baker
1.
Last night's storm drips from the redbud.
Droplets stutter in the morning breeze
and dot the patio, bedazzle the grass.
The rabbit's ears twitch when the blue jay—
screecher, dive-bomber, cat-chaser—
emerges from its nest in the pine
to forage among the perennials as
last night's storm drips from the redbud.
2.
In the shady corners of the garden, foxglove
thrives, pointing its purple way skyward,
towering over the spreading hostas, their
white-rimmed leaves. Their drooping leaves.
Beside them the rabbit trims the clover,
pink-white poms disappearing into her
rapidly working jaws. Sun on the grass.
In the shady corner of the garden, foxglove.
3.
I have so much yet to reconcile. Sun and shadow.
I wish I understood how to make a garden thrive.
How to account for the shifting seasons. Drought
and cicada emergence, the emerald ash borer.
Ten years of my brother's labor to green this plot
that draws the rabbit, a pair of cardinals, the jays.
Here, raised beds; there, a shade tree. Patient years.
I have so much yet to reconcile. Shadow, sun.
4.
How to account for the shifting seasons? Sometimes,
even in the face of care, things don't thrive. Rabbits
eat the hostas down to the roots, the jays strip bare
the raspberry bush. Blight migrates northward.
I wish I'd understood how long a root system takes
to secure the soil, how many seasons of growth pass
beneath the surface. Now, trumpet vine and rabbits.
Last night's storm dripping from the redbud.
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Jennifer Saunders (she/her) is the author of Tumor Moon, winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest (forthcoming from Concrete Wolf, 2025) and Self Portrait with Housewife (Tebot Bach, 2019). A Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Orison Anthology nominee, Jennifer's work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Poet Lore, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of Stained: an anthology of writing about menstruation (Querencia Press, 2023) and lives in German-speaking Switzerland.
by Aza Pace
by Atia Sattar
a fish slipping
brushing gentle within
bathing anew in everything
I ate: masala dosa, nasi goreng
and thai food spicy.
dad couldn’t eat spicy at the end
couldn’t eat at all. I taped
the tube near his nose, trimmed
the tape with tiny scissors, kept
it from rubbing against his mouth
untrespassed by food, articulated
only in pain or anger or impatience
but mostly staying shut.
we never spoke
of our shared germinations
the bodies growing inside our bodies
eating and eating and eating
until each of us felt sick.
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Atia Sattar is a Pakistani-born poet whose writing explores the embodied intersections of motherhood, grief, gender and race. Her poetry has appeared in West Trade Review, MQR: Mixtape; Rogue Agent (Pushcart Nomination) and Cathexis Northwest Press. Her prose can be found in various publications including Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Academe, and the Cambridge Quarterly for Health Care Ethics. She is Associate Teaching Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California.
by Kyra Lisse
In seventh grade, I was sent home
for the weekend with a baby
with a battery for a heart.
She was born with soft-
ware that measured how quickly
I could get out of bed when, at three a.m.,
the soundbox in her belly
started simulating cries—born
with an app that tracked how apt I was
at determining what she needed.
I raised a bottle to her hard plastic
lips; she did not suckle. I pulled
her cheek toward my budding breast;
she did not settle. I peeled off
her spotless diaper and swapped it
for a new one, tried to align the sensor
that was sewn into the cloth
with the chip underlying her absent
vagina. Still, my baby cried.
On Monday, about seventeen hours after
my baby stopped breathing
(I was sitting on the couch, and she, in my lap;
I thought her forehead smelled
sweet, like baby powder, like real baby,
and then she powered off as planned),
Mrs. Chaiken, a mother herself, scrolled
through the automated report and gave me
a grade: ninety-six percent.
She congratulated me
and took my baby away.
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Kyra Lisse is a writer and editor from the Philadelphia area. A graduate of Hollins University's MFA in Creative Writing, she has seen her work published in Ghost City Review, Sky Island Journal, Paper Brigade, New Voices Magazine, and Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, among other places. Kyra currently lives in Lancaster, PA.
by Michelle Bitting
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!
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We’re all in the same boat ready to float off the edge of the world. —The Band
When I should be asleep
but stay up anyway
step outside to sneak a smoke
behind the recycling bin
froth of soda cans
grass green bottles
spent water from France
a silo of silent witnesses
once effervescent
their colorful labels
torn and scraped now
glass shadows
cast to a rubber raft
under stars
the soft swish
of listing palms
that lean down
but can never reach far enough
lend a hand up
to new dignity.
We are not all in the same boat.
The lucky
find reinvention:
shelf sentinels
curiosities
emerald knickknacks
maybe something more
than holding someone’s luxuries.
Who knows.
Is there a purpose for everything
behind the human grind
beyond the shade
of blameless recycling?
Strangers in a truck
redeeming emptiness
sanctioned on the side
the traffic of coins
sputtered back
at disreputable living
a huddled shimmering
flatbeds
shuttled off in the dark
wet necks
liquid eyes
that glitter the night
shivering as their captors walk
fast from sight
pockets laden with gold
and don’t you just want to
turn them on their heads
shake them hard
til they break
til they shatter
like stars
spilling back
all that stolen brightness?
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Michelle Bitting is the author of six poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the Wilder Prize and named one of Kirkus Reviews 2022 Best of Indie. Her chapbook, Dummy Ventriloquist, was published in 2024 by C & R Press. Recent poetry appears on The Slowdown, Thrush, Cleaver, The Poetry Society of New York’s Milk Press, Heavy Feather Review, National Poetry Review, Catamaran, ONE ART, and is featured as Poem of the Week in The Missouri Review. Bitting is writing a novel that centers around Los Angeles and her great-grandmother, stage and screen actor Beryl Mercer, and is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.
by Sherry Abaldo
I don’t even know whether to pronounce
myself vase like ace or vahz.
Should have come with care instructions.
So fragile, so much wide-mouthed
yearning to be bud vase, mason jar,
Grecian urn. I am aubergine, brackish,
cobalt. I change with the light. Where
feet should be I have a see-through moon.
Water tickles me no end. I thrill to stem
pokes, stray sepals, fallen petals
bright as stars against my midnight belly.
I was almost a bell. I was almost
made of iron. I was almost useful, but
I had to be so precious. Put away
for decades. Maine shed, LA closet. Now
I’m out and shining. Touch my cool assumed
perfection. Careful. Feed me flowers.
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Sherry Abaldo lives with her husband in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, ONE ART (Top 10 Read July 2024), Rattle, The Eunoia Review, Down East Magazine, and on The History Channel and PBS among other outlets. Her poems are forthcoming in Sequestrum, The Mackinaw, and elsewhere. As a researcher, her latest nonfiction contribution is due from HarperCollins in 2025. More at sherryabaldo.com.
by Sara Rosenberg
What I want is the buttery light of our kitchen
and my mother’s last lemon chicken.
What I want is your memory of snow
falling on larches. I let go the trails
you carved into the woods, each child’s
name knifed in timber. I dodge the lanky spiders,
leave your cicada shells to march along the sill.
Where would I keep it, your collection of rocks
and my mother’s spent tubes of paint?
I say someday I’ll read your margin notes, drink in
the fading ink, but I let slip the loose pages—
paper’s scattered white petals.
To downsize you to a smaller house,
I am culling the seven decades of your life.
I stack the reams of slides and stories you tell–
days camped at timberline in drifts of snow,
the fox that leveled its gaze at you,
alone together in the wild nowhere.
I find the minerals with penciled names,
boots crusted with a mountain’s silt
that carried you to the ponderosas
and the agates you faceted into my rings.
And now, you doze in the living room
in a cone of light.
I want to hold tender every last thing,
but I cannot contain it, not here,
where the blown leaves scatter and vanish.
I drag the trash can to the curb under a sky scarred
with stars, your trees a dull scratching
against the eaves. How I will miss
your house, its shadows blue along the bear grass
and prickly pear patches, its nests of sleeping does.
When you do not come to the door, I step into the mouth
of your foyer, where your breath floats in off the mildew
and roses, your skin the paper before it molders,
your lungs the books heaving with our dust.
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Sara Rosenberg’s poems have appeared in Pine Row Journal, Passengers Journal, and the Ocotillo Review. She lives in Austin, Texas.
by Mary Ann Honaker