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.
Empty wood crates for wine grapes, stacked against the wall, the labels on them decorate, dark-haired beauties balancing baskets of green or purple, their sprigs ripening Senorita Zinfandel, Pia, and Lodi Gold are still smiling after their fruit is squeezed, swallowed, and gone,
My pale white underwear drips from the inside clothing lines where no one will see them, where my mother teaches me to hold a thick bar of soap, how I should let it sink heavy into my palm before I rub it into the red, before I form two fists and scrub until my washboard thumbs are raw, until that dark stain of me is clean again.
Lisa Rua-Ware is a poet in central Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Lily Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, FOLIO, and elsewhere. When she’s not chasing after her two kids, she works as a technical writer.
