Nude Woman in a Red Armchair

SWWIM Every Day
by Alexandria Petrassi

by Alexandria Petrassi

                                                       after Pablo Picasso

 

Imagine you walk in on a woman being unmade. It’s late:

you descended for a glass of water or a macaron or an excuse

 

to lay claim to a cold sliver of night. In front of her, an artist

preaches to a canvas. Youth is nearly ripe in her. Her hips assert

 

curve over the upholstery. The armchair’s dark fist rests on her thigh,

remembering some other bounty. Her face is a still lunar phase.

 

Child ebbs. Woman waxes. One eye understands: she is an offering.

The artist begins to erase the woman’s shoulder flinching under his hand.

 

Breasts embark from their perch on the canvas. Her fingers collapse

into roots. A pearl necklace floats in the sea of her absence.

 

Are you still watching? Her body invites glaze of paint like shroud.

You cannot see the metallic kernel of his eye. You can only see

 

what he lets her keep. Hair like butter. Hair like mint. Skin like

packed porcelain. Skin like bruised sky. Lilac lips. Moon rock labia.

 

Divisions are desirable. They are doors. Open or closed.

Maybe you wonder what she dreams. Maybe you imagine

 

her eyes cast toward sealed clouds, her body stretching over

the grass where the absent sea drifts and sinks upon it.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Alexandria Petrassi studies poetry in the MFA program at George Mason University. She is Editor-in-Chief at So to Speak, an intersectional feminist literary journal. She is the winner of the 2018 Mary Roberts Rhinehart Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in CALAMITY, Crab Fat Magazine, Sweet Tree Review, The Seldom Review, on The American Writer’s Museum’s blog, and on Stillhouse Press’s blog, Moonshine Murmurs. You can find her on Instagram @alexandriapetra.

Bildungsroman

SWWIM Every Day
by Paula Persoleo

by Paula Persoleo

The female mates

only once

with her mid-

Atlantic blue.

That doesn't mean

this decapoda

can't survive

without him.

True, before

she's mature,

she's carried

under

the weight

of his shell,

russet pincers scratching

the surface

of the bay's

brackish floor

as she stores him

inside her

to spawn

over and over

alone

with her egg sac.

But

carnivore,

omnivore,

detritivore,

claws crack

clams

to support

a million minions

 

tucked tightly

to her carapace.

Once winter's

cold water comes,

she burrows

in the sand,

insulating herself,

isolating herself,

a scavenging

specimen

in the salty

estuary.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Paula Persoleo is a 2011 graduate of Stony Brook’s MFA program in Southampton, NY. Her recent work has been accepted by Panoply, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Sheila-Na-Gig. She is an adjunct at the University of Delaware and lives in Delaware with her husband.

Lonely Girl Abecedarian

SWWIM Every Day
by Hannah Cohen

by Hannah Cohen

Anyway, did you know that I wear

            bad luck like wet shoes?

                        Can you believe it’s been four years since my last

 

date? I’m cleaned out when it comes to mood:

            eager, enthusiastic, excited.

                        Fuck it. Actual texts I get from

 

guys:

            hi or

                        jk or

 

lol—I digress. I am

            making things even more difficult. God, I’m really

                        never gonna get laid again.

 

Okay, okay, I’m being a little dramatic. I should be on meds,

            probably, but I’m too self-conscious to ask my therapist 

                        questions, and tell him how

 

reality outside his room with the blue carpet and wood paneling

            sucks.

                        Truly terrible. Apologies in advance for the ongoing mutiny in my head, one

 

usurper of good intentions after another, but hey,

            vicious cycles have to end at some point. You know I’m done for

                        when I love men the way I failed algebra. Find

 

x, solve for why.

             Yearning for the exact inexactness of my design,

                        zodiac signs, the numbers, the what-else out there.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Hannah Cohen lives in Virginia. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Bad Anatomy (Glass Poetry Press, 2018). She's the co-editor of Cotton Xenomorph. Recent and forthcoming publications include Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Yes Poetry, Gravel, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.

Are You Latinx

SWWIM Every Day
by Andrea Dulanto

by Andrea Dulanto

Did you know your grandparents?

No? 

Then you have no history.

Your mother from Argentina?

Tu padre de Peru?

He doesn’t look like your father.

Is he your real father?

You look white.

Why don’t you just say you’re from here?

Can’t cook,

slightly anorexic.

Middle-class.

Catholic school—yes, okay—we’ll accept that.

Pero Buddhist—spiritual—Unitarian Universalist? ¿Qué es eso?

You only read books in English.

Never read Don Quixote/

tried to read Don Quixote.

Didn’t you leave behind the entire Spanish language?

(but sometimes it’s home)

Didn’t you leave home?

More than once?

The daughter

should stay home.

No husband, no hijos?

Too queer.

 

(not queer enough,

but that’s another poem)

Middle-aged,

sola sola sola.

Familia es todo.

What is home?

What is home?

you listen to Kingdom of the Sun: The Inca Heritage

(is this your culture

or the need to prove your culture)

you read Nelly’s story in the liner notes—

the nuns at school

teach her

singing

is a sin

a musicologist

records Nelly’s father, Don Luis Camasco, with his band of musicians/ guitar makers—

Conjunto Mensajeros Dos de Mayo

they lift their songs

late into the night

Nelly listens

finally, one night, her father says—you’re my daughter

finally, the musicologist says—the nuns didn’t know

all there is

so she sings

the musicologist takes notes—

“a voice harsh from disuse but full of spirit”

you listen

you are not her

she is not you

every voice

is a story

her voice

is a story

hers

alone.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Andrea Dulanto is a Latina queer writer. Degrees include an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida International University, and a B.A. in Literature and Women’s Studies from Antioch College in Ohio. She has worked as a writing instructor, a freelance writer, and editor. In 2016, she was awarded an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. Publications include Gertrude Journal, The Kenyon Review, BlazeVOX, Court Green, and Sinister Wisdom.

Memory of Enchantment

SWWIM Every Day
by Sarah Browning

by Sarah Browning

After Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter

 

How is it I imagine us older, already,

and walking in autumn to this song,

and we are beautiful, as we are now,

beautiful as you are now, when you

look at me. It is autumn, the city is

quiet and not quiet as the song is,

around us, kids on bikes, as we are

wrapped around each other like

the piano and the sax and the sudden

bikes but then the quiet and the yellow

leaves. My arm is through yours, my

hand in your pocket and it is autumn,

late afternoon. We’ve had a quiet good

day of work, each, then headed out

together and the song is the city we love

around us together and we are older but

not yet old and we are beautiful as the song.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

The daughter of a war refugee, Sarah Browning is the author of Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017) and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007). She is co-founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock and an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. She is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. She has been guest editor or co-edited special issues of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Delaware Poetry Review, and POETRY magazine. Browning co-hosts the Sunday Kind of Love poetry series at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC.

I’m So Fucking Proud of You. I’ll Always Be Proud of You.

SWWIM Every Day
by E. Kristin Anderson

by E. Kristin Anderson

(after Beto O’Rourke)

I swear I will scream until the bluebonnets               come back into bloom                    

    a river of birth      in the ditches on the highway       until the grackles fall     

            yellow-eyed          to perch on my arms,          throats open

        to cry a piercing anthem,                 to purge             the hurricane     

    around us          to pull the windows apart        from every home       so we might

hear      every single voice    the guitars hanging from the ceilings     and rocking

    on the floors        and I am a magnolia tree          older than the bees       and I still

welcome the bees      and the beetles        I have known forever           I am

             a magnolia tree                blooming           under a crescent moon        

 

a Texas moon         if there ever was one        to welcome the water      from the Gulf    

      the things we dare to hope        raining down         on the driest valley       a tornado

                     to wreck the myth of          The Border        to grind our fences to sand      

and I want to breathe that sand      into myself        into my mockingbird heart         

             a broken alarm      so loud against the buzz of traffic         on I-35      against

the beat of the wings of the monarchs            swirling toward Mexico      the winds

     of choice           whistling in every tongue that has ever          kissed the grass

          of my home          where a sunset      is a promise and a sunrise

is a whisper and a love song and         a fiddle and a violin        to tell you the truth

and the truth is my own hands      the glitter and the mud in my skin       it is the time

I was sick         in the ditch        where later primrose bloomed         alongside aster

        it is the blue of my tattered jeans         the blue of the newborn coyote’s eye.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture and Hysteria: Writing the female body (forthcoming). Kristin’s poetry has been published worldwide in many magazines and she is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee, Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night, Fire in the Sky, 17 seventeen XVII and Behind, All You've Got (forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker.

Kenning

SWWIM Every Day
by Emily Hockaday

by Emily Hockaday

In Viking sagas, language is

roundabout. A sword is a blood

worm; blood battle sweat. Is it this

that made me a poet? Around

my finger: a ring of Frejya’s tears bind

us. Your blood is also of Viking

descent. In Iceland we blend in

with the locals, drinking heavy

beers, eating fish stew, until they hear

us speak: Is this also where my gift

for circumlocution stems? You tell me

you love me and I describe all the ways

in which I would have made a good

conqueror. You don’t argue. We

look out over the glacial mountains

(stone teeth, ice trolls, snow knives)

and beneath, the lava (Earth’s blood,

Surtr’s misery, liquid flame) lies

in wait; there is always seismic

activity here, no matter how stable

or frozen the land appears.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Emily Hockaday is author of three chapbooks—Ophelia: A Botanist's Guide, What We Love & Will Not Give Up, and Starting a Life—with a fourth, Beach Vocabulary, forthcoming from Red Bird Chaps. Her work has appeared in a number of journals including the North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Newtown Literary, and most recently the Maine Review. She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and @E_Hockaday.

Heart Like Rambo

SWWIM Every Day
by Kateema Lee

by Kateema Lee

At sixty-six, my mother can’t retire. Most of her life

she saw risk as God’s blessing. Married over and over,

moved here, there, and back. Back in the day,

she was power, afro swag, wearing platform boots.

Today, she wears a uniform, helps “important people”

enter buildings. She complains she doesn’t have much.

I remind her she is rich in other ways. I’m not my mother.

My only risk is flying; I revel in that feeling after the fasten

seatbelt sign is off, the exhaling after unbuckling, the stretch

of legs, the sway of hips up and down the aisle, a freedom

fear strangles on land. Is it possible to feel blessed and broken?

Some of us hold onto safety like deeply planted roots hold onto soil.

My 80s-loving friend says high altitude makes hearts

strong like Rambo. To my friend, it makes sense to always be alert,

always protecting self. He understands the need to fortify during

peacetime, to prepare, to build a fortress. We build forts

around each other sometimes, send Morse code distress signals

at “first blood.” Most times, we exchange pleasantries,

then disappear. In another life, we would’ve been lovers

planting landmines for anyone unlucky enough to find

 

our refuge. But risk? At sea-level loneliness is an anchor.

My mother never hesitates to “put God to the test.”

Some of us are trees trying to retire trunk heavy.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Kateema Lee is a Washington D.C. native. Her recent work has been published in print and online journals such as Beltway Poetry Quarterly, African American Review, Gargoyle, Baltimore Review, and others. Her new chapbook, Musings of a Netflix Binge Viewer, is forthcoming. She is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, a Callaloo fellow, and a participant of The Home School and Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.

On the Colors of Houses

SWWIM Every Day
by Christine Poreba

by Christine Poreba

The red cardinal behind

the fuchsia orchid pressed

against my window

pecks at the feeder and

his beak is as orange

and pointed as a cartoon bird’s

against the green in which

my glance takes in the reddish-stemmed

plant that marks the ashes of our dog.

The once white house down the block

is a memory covered

in just one coat:

the pink our new neighbor chose

is the shade of strawberry frosting,

the mane of a princess pony,

like the ones my son loves to color in,

though he wishes my black ink printer

could make its own rainbows.

The Shakers decreed that only

their meeting houses could

be painted white without

(of a blueish shade within).

As though the blankness

contained too much space for desire.

I covet the clean white house

two streets over, the way the bright

Satsumas pop from the leaves that hover

by the marigold doorway.

The owners often stand on a scaffold,

scraping clean another eave.

Once, we tended to our house this way,

once electric green with a hand-built

fence that wasn’t weather-worn

and a puppy that sprang inside its yard.

A house, like a body, has walls that are thin

against the griefs time brings it.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Christine Poreba’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Subtropics, The Southern Review, and The Sun Magazine, and various anthologies. Her book, Rough Knowledge, was awarded the Philip Levine Prize. A native New Yorker, she now lives in Tallahassee, Florida with her husband and son.

First Learned, Last Lost

SWWIM Every Day
by Darby Lyons

by Darby Lyons

I am not supposed to help,

the speech therapist tells me

as she holds a list of words before my mother,

saying, Tell me the opposite of each of these:

 

Short.

[Silence]

Quiet.

[Silence]

Dark.

 

My mother turns to me, looking—

apologetic

         embarrassed

small

 

but I am not supposed to help.

 

It’s been three weeks since Dad reported

from ICU, how she must have fainted,

toppled against the tile,

a gash and crack in her skull,

how one paramedic turned green,

had to leave the room to steady himself

after seeing the pool of vomit and blood.

 

Now we sit in brain injury rehab,

as she works her way back, reaching

for words her memory lost,

not meaning, the doctors say,

just words.

 

Linguists claim the first learned is

the last lost. I want to offer words

I believe must be lodged in her memory.

If I say We like to hop, will she say on top of Pop?

If I say Mr. Brown, will she say Upside Down?

Can the learning-to-read call and response

my mother and I once shared

call her back to me?

Those were my firsts, not hers,

and I cannot know

what words she learned

in her own mother’s arms.

 

My memory cannot hold hers.

 

And I am not supposed to help,

so I smile, thinking Tall. Loud.

Light. The answer is Light.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Darby Lyons lives in Cincinnati and recently retired from teaching English and creative writing in Wyoming, Ohio. She received her MFA from the Sewanee School of Letters, and her work has appeared in 8 Poems, Mud Season Review, and other publications. She was a Tupelo Press 30/30 Project Poet for April, 2018. Darby is still learning how to be retired; so far, that means eating breakfast out with friends and writing poetry in coffee shops.

Counting the Weeper's Rings

SWWIM Every Day
by Jules Jacob

by Jules Jacob

Swaying in tree

pose     invoking ability

to quell shaking limbs,

 

I question years of narrow

rings     future possibilities

of wide ones in-between.

 

I breathe-in     realign

bend to chronic thirst

skip warrior III, exhaling

 

stronger children

in eucalyptus & western

red cedar     hiding

 

them in willow hair

before we drop

to corpse pose.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Julie “Jules” Jacob is a contemporary poet who often writes about dichotomousconditions and relationships among humans and the natural world. Her poems are recently featured or forthcoming in Plume Poetry, The Tishman Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Rust + Moth, Yes Poetry and elsewhere. She’s the author of The Glass Sponge, a semi-finalist in the New Women’s Voices Series (Finishing Line Press) and a resident of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Poetry Workshop. Visit julesjacob.com.

Cleaning Out

SWWIM Every Day
by Jane Ellen Glasser

by Jane Ellen Glasser

She said goodbye

to alarm clocks,

appointment books

bank accounts,

cell phones,

welcome mats,

she scrubbed

guilt and regret

from the floorboards,

evicted troublesome

guests, opened

windows and doors

to let her house breathe

till she was clean

as a wind-stripped thicket,

airy as the left-

open spaces of a

Henri Moore sculpture,

the essence of form

(a face, a chest, an arm)

so clearly defined

by being absent.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in journals, such as Hudson Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Georgia Review. In the past, she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. A first collection of her poetry, Naming the Darkness, with an introduction by W. D. Snodgrass, was issued by Road Publishers in 1991. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005 for Light Persists, and The Long Life won the Poetica Publishing Company Chapbook Contest in 2011. The Red Coat (2013), Cracks (2015), and In the Shadow of Paradise (2017), are all available from FutureCycle Press. Selected Works: 1980-2019 is due out in 2019. See more at www.janeellenglasser.com.

In and Out of Dusk

SWWIM Every Day
by Karla Van Vliet

by Karla Van Vliet

I.

In the lower meadow the lone coyote prances amongst the newly cut

hay. So rare to spy in broad daylight, the long-legged native most often

seen, like memory, slipping in and out of dusk. I know, it makes no

sense but all I want is to take this scrap of fur and make a bed of him

to rest on.

II.

Night in the mountains up north; the sky drowning in stars and the

valley darkness’s accumulation. I feel turned upside down. As we walk

to our campsite I hold your hand tightly in mine, I have the idea you

will keep me safe. All between here and there is filled with coyote’s

yelping. Sounding like so many sorrows, then silence. Later we make

love in our tent, something desperate in my need for your body, I weep,

skin on skin.

III.

In my own throat a high-pitched descanted treble. This is how I call

you to me (Beloved… Beloved…) from across the distances between us:

position, opinion, perception. Where are you? and I am here.

IV.

In the end I could not find the narrow ledge I would have called

concession. The coyote, that trickster, slipped into darkness. And in

what little light was left, simply, I would not give.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Karla Van Vliet is the author of two collections of poems, From the Book of Remembrance (Shanti Arts, 2015) and The River From My Mouth (Shanti Arts, 2015), as well as a poem-length chapbook, Fragments: From the Lost Book of the Bird Spirit (Folded Word, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Poet Lore, The Tishman Review, Green Mountains Review, Crannog Magazine, and others. Karla is a co-founder and editor of deLuge Journal. See more at www.vanvlietarts.com.

The Other Woman #3

SWWIM Every Day
by Laurie Kolp

by Laurie Kolp

She kissed as if to breathe you inside her

(but) from the waist down, she was never there.

In her garden, the lies were shaking out moist silks.

To endure the endless walk through self,

pride pumped in like poison.

Cento credits: L1-Ocean Vuong, Kissing in Vietnamese; L2-Claudia Emerson, Early Elegy: Headmistress; L3-Sylvia Plath, The Detective; L4-Molly Peacock, Altruism; L5-Anne Sexton, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Laurie Kolp is the author of the complete poetry collection, Upon the Blue Couch, and chapbook, Hello, It's Your Mother. Her publications include Southern Poetry Anthology VIII: Texas, Stirring, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, Front Porch Journal, and more. Laurie lives in Southeast Texas with her husband, three children and two dogs.

Co-Possession

SWWIM Every Day
by Jessica Lee

by Jessica Lee

When does cohabitation become co-possession?

You bat my hand away

from my own fingers, tell me

to quit picking at the layer of skin I’m peeling

back from the bed around my thumb. I nod

submissive, suck the blood, then sit

on my own hands—a show of moderation.

Like a child, I pay pretend reverence

as if you were a parent, my part-creator.

We switch roles at night over the sink:

I tell you to be more gentle

with your gums, use a lighter hand

for brushing teeth. I’d argue

oral health matters more than

bitten cuticles, long-term,

but what’s the use? Your body

matters to my body and vice versa.

Still, our hands are ultimately

our own. We show love

in the ways the ways we know how.

Concern, a bird twittering just beyond

the window. We look up, smile

at her song, then go on drawing

our own blood.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Jessica Lee is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Narrative Magazine and an Editorial Reader for Copper Canyon Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOAAT, cream city review, DIAGRAM, Fugue, Passages North, phoebe, Prairie Schooner, Zone 3, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2017 Greg Grummer Poetry Award and the 2017 So to Speak Poetry Contest. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. Find her online at readjessicalee.com.

The Strangers Were Poets

SWWIM Every Day
by Kelle Groom

by Kelle Groom

I remember sleeping with the Ballad for Metka

Krasovec over my head for years in Florida, white

cover with people crowded together

and their ghosts above their black print selves,

pink too like shells, book small enough

to hold comfortably in a hand,

the ballad singing over my head all night

long, while I slept close to the floor, train

shaking as if trying to rouse me.

I remember shaking Tomaz Salamun’s

hand in St. Marks, I’d asked strangers

in the dark, where is St. Mark’s, laughing

because they’d been to St. Mark’s

or wanted to go but couldn’t,

or we asked strangers on the street

where is Tomaz Salamun

reading, and the strangers were poets

or lovers of poetry, and pointed us

toward St. Marks, their arms raised

like parentheses, like waves, but it was

almost over, and this was clear when we

arrived, and everyone stood in one of many

little circles, a large medieval door

shut. It was over. Dejected,

I climbed stairs to another floor,

down a hall, a restroom where I

stood in front of the glass examining

my face, my newly shorn

hair, and Teresa ran in, Hurry,

Hurry, she cried. Simen is holding

Tomaz Salamun hostage downstairs.

Simen said he can’t leave until

he meets you. She loves you, Simen said

to Tomaz Salamun, as if this would convince

him to stay until I ran out the bathroom door,

down the stairs, into the vast hall

to find Simen from Sweden

by way of Norway who doesn’t even like

people all that much, holding Tomaz

Salamun hostage for me because

I’d said I loved him. Like the cold

spark in a violet on a winter sill,

alive and unexpected. I remember

my hand in Tomaz Salamun’s, like a hand but

also like bread rising around

my hand, warm, tremendously

comforting, Who are you,

he asked, who are you?

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Kelle Groom’s four poetry collections include Spill, Five Kingdoms, Luckily (Anhinga Press), and Underwater City (University Press of Florida). Her memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster), is a B&N Discover pick and NYTBR Editor's Choice. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry. She teaches in the MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe.

this country will require you to be magical then attempt to burn you for being a witch

SWWIM Every Day
by Angelique Zobitz

by Angelique Zobitz

Girl-child, power-in-waiting, Revolution, 

this world will try to cleave you

in half, reach inside—

lay waste, leave you

a bloody mess of seed,

pulp, carved out meat—

pick your bones

attempt to harness your sweet

for a world full

of eager carrion birds.

 

Transfigurate:

flower, fruit, fire—

unfurl an inferno

curling coils down

your devil back.

Scorch them with your flame

tongue. Remind them you

predate evangelism;

leave them ashes,

burn them down—

teach them our bodies

are best left alone.

_______________________________________________________________________________________


Angelique Zobitz has recently been published in So to Speak: a feminist journal of language + art, Junto Magazine, and Geeky Press' Hoosier Lit Anthology, with additional work forthcoming in Sugar House Review. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and daughter, and their two rescue dogs.

I Have Learned to Listen for the Nectar

SWWIM Every Day
by Ashley Taylor

by Ashley Taylor

Stuck and dripping at the back of your throat,

this juniper seed syrup pine cone pit

rolls your words on the coil of my ear;

and like tucking curls behind my temple,

I know you don’t mean it.         So again,

hold out your tongue for honeycomb and gin

because I keep searching for art in you.

A compass for bewilderment in hues

of amber on gold on rose; I forget

to check wonder at the door like a debt.

Caught in the wild lilac from the yard,

I keep finding bees in the mason jars.

With wings like sinew, I pull them from sap.

Stringing arcs of honey cling, and reach back.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Ashley Taylor is currently pursuing her MFA in Writing (Poetry) at Spalding University. She holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Louisville, where she teaches college composition and facilitates UofL's LGBTQ+ creative writing group. She's volunteered as editor for The White Squirrel, Miracle Monocle, and Lemon Star Mag. Her work has appeared in Lavender Review, Limestone Journal, Coe Review, Merrimack Review, and elsewhere. She is the founder and curator of Louisville KY reading series River City Revue.

evening : girl

SWWIM Every Day
Gabrielle Brant Freeman

by Gabrielle Brant Freeman

I

 

Most of the women I know sleep with a weapon.

A crowbar between the headboard and the bed,

a hammer just under the mattress. Truth?

We’ve been women all our lives. Baby,

we know our misogyny.

Our trust has a honed edge, always woke.

 

Because we’ve lain awake,

insomnia as much a weapon

as a curse, listening in the dark, a mass

of sibilant shadow, lain awake in our beds

listening for the floorboard creak, the debate

raging in our heads. It’s safe now, trust.

 

But. We know everything’s a weapon. Best learn the truth

early. Sweetheart? Wake up. Your mouth is full of teeth.

 

II

 

You bite. You kick. You scream. This is a truth

we teach our daughters. I feel like I am just now waking

up. This America says girl babies

turn from children to objects in a minute. Weaponized

bodies overnight. As I tuck my pre-teen into bed,

I wonder exactly how much misogyny

 

it took for me to reach middle age with a mess

of defensive lessons right behind my eyes. Don’t trust

any man. Keys between your fingers to gouge. Best

stay sober. Yell fire, not rape. Our boy babies wake

one sudden morning as licensed weapons.

Each and every one, somebody’s baby.

 

It’s true. Every morning, mothers wake their babies,

lock and load for the bed that has been made.

 

III

 

Hush little baby,

don’t say a word. Papa’s gonna miss

the point. The mockingbird’s voice is a weapon

for which a diamond ring is no substitute.

I am a grown woman. I am a little girl awake

in the dark tucked in to my bed

 

and quiet. Something lurks in the dark, and my bed

crouches. My ears are trained to hear my babies’

breathing, to hear each distinct footfall. I am awake

in my own bed in my own house, mistress

to fear. Papa’s gonna teach you a truth:

the weapon that you know is better than the weapon

 

you miss. Evening is to girl as silence is to truth.

They tell you you better hush? Baby, choose your weapon.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Gabrielle Brant Freeman's poetry has been published in many journals, including EMRYS, One, Scoundrel Time, storySouth, Whale Road Review, and Waxwing. She was nominated for a Pushcart in 2017, and she was a Best of the Net 2014 finalist. Gabrielle won the 2015 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. Press 53 published her book, When She Was Bad, in 2016. Gabrielle earned her MFA through Converse College. Read more at http://gabriellebrantfreeman.squarespace.com.

Green Light

SWWIM Every Day
by Samantha Fain

by Samantha Fain

The light was red     but I said it was green
because I wanted to see the alternate universe
where I was dizzy and starred     I wanted sirens
to scream for me     my mother drove off     stopped
said shit     said we could have been killed     said
what the hell is wrong with you     I am kaleidoscopic
broken light but beautiful     I started the engine
in the garage     with all the doors closed
I am unsure if it was an accident     I was fading
as particles     in parts of cosmos I can’t see
I was coughing up planets     for three hours
I was telling my mother     I love you     forgive me
I was tilted     I was spinning the wrong way

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Samantha Fain lives in Connersville, Indiana. She is an undergraduate student studying psychology and creative writing with a minor in Spanish at Franklin College. Her work has previously appeared in The Indianapolis Review, all the sins, and Awkward Mermaid. In her free time, she goes to concerts and makes puns. She can be found oversharing about her personal life on Twitter at @samcanliftacar.

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