SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.
I keep thinking about this first day of April —so thin, March’s cheek is pressed against the morning How the air quenched with spring will soon be thirsty again How this day, fast and forgettable like a year, is still a day I keep thinking about the lake of sadness in me How violent it is to drown within oneself How tragic to re-enter the mouth of your suffering and still kneel to its hunger
Yet still April is bright and forgiving and each chirping bird is reinventing its pocket of the sky with song and maybe despite all this, life itself is not a wound Tenderness, swallow me whole let me enter another April with hope dancing between my ribs.
Jessica Thiru is a Kenyan poet born and bred in South Africa. Her work appears in Button Poetry’s 2023 video contest and Querencia Press’s Not Ghosts, But Spirits IV. Her poems explore the morphing space between becoming and noticing. Her first chapbook, Burning of Absence, is forthcoming with Querencia Press. You can find her on Instagram at @leechteeeth and Tumblr at @leechteethwrites.
