by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello
I could hear you smoking through the phone
that night after work, could hear the horns
of taxis and tires grinding glass into asphalt,
could almost see the cigarette’s whorls caught
between your knuckles and in your throat.
That night you told me what others don’t
know about leaving someone behind, how
many mothers and fathers we have lost, how
easy it had become to harden and molt, again
and again abandoning yourself. What, then,
muscled you back on your feet the next day?
And after that? Let me be selfish this once. Stay
like that, alive. Let the ash fall, let the smoke rise.
I can almost still see you, and me not yet left behind.
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox, winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry; and co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle, winner of the Translation Grand Prize from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, and more. She serves as Director of Programs and Marketing for Miami Book Fair.
photo by Carolyn Kehler
From September 14-25, in honor of her residency at The Betsy Hotel and our 10th anniversary season, SWWIM Every Day will be featuring a selection of poems curated by Sarah Audsley.
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press, 2023). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. She serves as the Writing Program Director at Vermont Studio Center.
We hope you enjoy this special collaboration!