Bell on Knee

SWWIM Every Day
by Kelly R. Samuels

by Kelly R. Samuels

There is the man who wears a bell

on his knee in that novel. It serves as a telling,

like the buoy near the north shore that rang out

the first night here—a warning to scatter. To give

berth, wide and slow and steady.

He walks in the garden, this man, this character,

this symbol, but there are no gardens here. Here,

instead, there is the unkempt lilac and drying pine

and the wild thimbleberry.

And the lake lunging, noisy and troubling, and then

still, the waves no more than shaken foil.

The small purple wildflower clinging to the stone

where I saw the butterflies—along the south shore, along

the point with the name of a girl you once loved.

 

The stone, reddish and swirled, bared

and visible below the water. With the hollowed out

bowls for smaller stones of grey.

 

The stream coppery and bloodied at its mouth.

 

Bells for me—markers

of something, these. Not a warning to disperse,

as with him.

Nor a god or faith, I don’t know—

something

of confirmation and bliss.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Kelly R. Samuels is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals including The Carolina Quarterly, Sweet Tree Review, Salt Hill, Permafrost, and RHINO. She lives in the upper Midwest and has two chapbooks being released in early 2019.

The Artist at the Colony Asks Me If I’m Famous

SWWIM Every Day
by Marjorie Maddox

by Marjorie Maddox

if I’m someone she should know,

pay attention to, bother having coffee with,

talk with about the father who raped her at twelve,

about my father, about the slant of rainy light after

you’re weeping for half a life and then some and

when/if you leave the toilet paper unwinding from the top

or bottom, and what our papas said the two days after,

and avocados and kumquats, and the strange

geometric shapes that cascade into our dreams

five days each year before the equinox, and if

I’m well known enough for her to pry open my palm

and slice my lifelines with an X-Acto knife—would I

do that for her?—and have I won a Pulitzer yet, and

what color were the eyes of God when I looked straight

at Him for three minutes without blinking once, Ok

maybe once, and may she have that last bottle of wine,

could she borrow a glass, and how much does The New Yorker

pay, do I think they would consider her work, she’s started

writing, too, have I slept with anyone there, and does the mold

in my studio make my eyes itch in the morning—or evening,

she’s heard both—because she really wants to know about the time

the London editor who knew the New York editor who knew me

from someone at the colony or raved about my work on Eskimos or

transplants or something like that and later sat on a committee

that judged that really important prize—she can’t remember

which one right now because, thanks again, she had a bit too much

of my Merlot, but am I that writer, the one she’s heard

something about, the one she should know?

No, I say, no, though I am someone

writing, trying to write, someone.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA) and Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Wives' Tales; True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series); Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock); Weeknights at the Cathedral (WordTech Editions); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); and Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award—as well as the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite Press), and over 550 poems, stories, and essays in journals and anthologies. Marjorie is the co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press 2005), assistant editor of Presence, and author of four children's books. For more, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com.

When wispy clouds drift through sparsely wooded mountains

SWWIM Every Day
by Martha Silano

by Martha Silano

When the contours of mountains resemble coliseums.

Cathedrality of mountains.

Relief of roadlessness.

That there are lakes impossible to reach by car.

That from this window just behind the wing, 20F,

there are no signs of life.

Once I packed a bag with cheddar goldfish.

Once my son threw up before we even boarded the plane.

Cracks and fissures, cuneiform of rock. Backbones and capillaries,

the snaking green edged with bluffs (long-ago ocean?).

He will turn eighteen next week.

Brain-like contours—cerebral cortex or cerebellum?

Contours thin like the veins of leaves, fronds of a sword fern, feet of a coot.

Time passed like a silent rail in the reeds.

The folds very Egyptian, mummies reposed in their tombs.

Like an alligator’s enormous tail, though lacking snout and teeth.

Once I sang La crocodile il est malade, il est malade a Singapour.

All those years, I thought I was singing sangue a peu—a little blood.

Clouds less cumulus, more cumulonimbus.

Towns scattered with houses like paint chips.

From the ground he would wave to the passengers in the sky: Bye-bye, babies!

Claw-like hills, afghan of cloud not like fresh snow but snow a few days old,

the occasional indentation where a foot or tire met asphalt.

The crocodile is sick. A little mercy, a little blood.

Between fluffy swirls, black holes.

When the binky and the sippy cup.

When the diaper bag and the teething ring.

Cottoned from above

like first tracks on Lynx Pass,

a pristine path through aspen, lodgepole, spruce.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Martha Silano is the author of five poetry books, including Gravity Assist (forthcoming 2019), The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, and Reckless Lovely, all from Saturnalia Books. She co-authored, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice. Her poems have appeared in Paris Review, Poetry, New England Review, and American Poetry Review, among others. Martha teaches at Bellevue College, near her home in Seattle, WA.

Fillers

SWWIM Every Day
by Majda Gama

by Majda Gama

“Strange Stars Pulsate According to the Golden Ratio”

The BBC headline & a snapshot of Lindsay Lohan

carrying a copy of the holy Quran run parallel on a news site.

Perhaps raw, almond-milk chai was too ordinary for her

so she turned to the book of a more exotic people.

Can America ever forgive her for reaching beyond yoga & rehab

into the terrain of the enemy? I mean, Jane Fonda is still

paying the price for looking eastward.

I like my life dry, like the lips an aesthetician told me she could fix,

use sugar-based fillers to fill in lines from smoking,

fill up the rosy skin browning with middle age.

Sure, the corners are downturned, someone needs to walk

around looking angry & I’m angry that the plump face of youth

is now the face I’m expected to buy back, just as my cheekbones

are emerging. FFS, Lindsey’s now allowed her lips to deflate.

After thinking all this through, I see The Archdruid Report

proclaim we are at peak meaninglessness.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Majda Gama is a Saudi-American poet based Washington, DC where she has roots as a Punk DJ and an activist. She has read her poetry at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature and Split This Rock 2018. Majda is a Best of the Net nominee. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Fairy Tale Review, The Normal School, Slice, and The South Dakota Review. Majda is a poetry editor for Tinderbox.

Skipping Rocks Across Cazenovia Creek

SWWIM Every Day
by Lisa Wiley

by Lisa Wiley

I keep rolling you over in my mind

like a smooth rock tumbled

for centuries along the creek bed.

Picking it up, I admire the polished curves,

wonder where we begin and end.

This pebble, only a few ounces,

weighs heavy on the heart.

Shall I pocket it like an albatross waiting

for that one halcyon summer day you visit?

Or toss it back into fresh water,

see you skip across to the other side?

Sometimes, there aren’t enough fucking rocks.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Lisa Wiley teaches English at SUNY Erie Community College in Buffalo, NY. She is the author of three chapbooks: Big Apple Rain (The Writer’s Den, 2018), My Daughter Wears Her Evil Eye to School (The Writer’s Den, 2015), and Chamber Music (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Her poetry has appeared in Earth’s Daughters, The Healing Muse, Medical Journal of Australia, Mom Egg Review and Third Wednesday, among others. She has read her work throughout New York state.

Disrobing God

SWWIM Every Day
by Jane Ellen Glasser

by Jane Ellen Glasser

Shave off that shaggy beard.

You are no one’s grandfather.

Remove the illusion

of white skin.

Admit the lie

that hides

beneath white robes.

Tell the truth.

You did not beget a son.

No one died for our sins.

No one prewrites the script

for our lives.

O we have created you,

fashioned from ego and hubris,

in our own image,

surrounded you with angels

waiting for us

through pearly gates.

Out of the wet tissues

of our need, out of the

sinking clay of our fears,

we whisper prayers in the ear

of a deaf universe.

I am not so foolish.

Redo your curriculum vitae.

Make up a different story.

One I can believe in.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

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.

Pier

SWWIM Every Day
by Kelle Groom

by Kelle Groom

for Mike Murray

I can’t understand the sound barrier.

Ray and I are required to be miles out to sea,

but we don’t have a boat.

It was just mind roar when you were falling.

I have the harpsichord king’s song

déjà vu feeling now. On the pier you can regard us

as one song sung to your body—an angel with four

thousand wings helped, parted you

like a crowd, like the crown of your red

hair.  I needed a sound truck with amps.

After Ray poured you into the air, your bones

made a bright cloud over the ocean, then sank,

and you were a river for a while.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

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.

Toxicodendron radicans

SWWIM Every Day
by Jules Jacob

by Jules Jacob

Gardeners stay your eyes to flowers

hikers, trails     walkers, paths.

Let insects have my leaves,

yellow-rumped warblers my berries.

I cling to those temptation woos

closer     I will tendril fingers

brush rushinol between breasts

and lips, your oiled hands forever

touching. Pustules, inflammation

pain, red lines     teachers I gift

after you’re gone—what do you

give me?     A rise in carbon

an increase in size and potency,

my agents distributing greenhouse-

gassed seeds.     Burn me,

I’ll blow you a reminder.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

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.

Murmuration

SWWIM Every Day
by Amy Watkins

by Amy Watkins

An osprey beats the wind with bowed wings,

steady till it drops and shakes in flight.

The wind catches and it rises again.

I watch from the porch where I’ve come early

to stop avoiding our father’s call. Last night,

I turned the ringer off then on then off again,

swiped down to ignore but texted back.

There are two birds in the tree across the street

and a third circling and circling, rising and falling

in the wind from a distant hurricane.

The phone rings. He wants to talk about you.

They say each bird attends to just seven others, and,

in this way, a thousand starlings turn together

like one creature. I’ll try not to make this a metaphor.

Once, you and I climbed the hills outside

Florence, Italy. Our dearest ones climbed with us

and, because we were few and each one loved

by all the others, I thought we made a kind of net

that might hold the breaking world together.

A murmuration of starlings unfurled like the aurora

borealis, a sheer curtain caught in wind,

twisting, tracing a path through twilight.

A hawk swoops low over the osprey nest.

I think it might land, but it doesn’t. You ask to meet

for coffee. Our father calls, and I don’t answer.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Amy Watkins grew up in the Central Florida scrub, surrounded by armadillos and palmetto brush and a big, loud, religious family—the kind of upbringing that’s produced generations of southern writers. She married her high school sweetheart, had a baby girl, and earned her MFA in poetry from Spalding University. She is the author of the chapbooks Milk & Water (Yellow Flag Press) and Wolf Daughter (forthcoming from Sundress Publications).

Scar

SWWIM Every Day
by Jeannine Hall Gailey

by Jeannine Hall Gailey

The voice it was in the storm

in the fire in whirlwind

spoke to me and told me

and it was in my veins

it left a scar inside my arm

the many needles

the bone the blood

knit me together in my mother’s womb

and said it is good

but things went wrong I complained

and he opened a river inside me

and he said it is good and

my tongue grew silent in the shadow

and inside my brain exploded with light

holes illuminating the disintegration of nerves

that tell me left from right that tell me when

I’m spinning I’m spinning God catch me I’m slipping

the swift tilting the backhand of God left me broken

let me fall

behold do not be afraid of the light

An aching hip a broken ankle my lips screwed tight

the many places the angels have touched

and left me limping

God spoke and my angel wears a tunic

sewed up with my scars

Wholly, Holy, Holey

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She’s the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and Field Guide to the End of the World, which won the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA’s Elgin Award. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Notre Dame Review and Prairie Schooner. Her web site is www.webbish6.com.

Golden Shovel in the Voice of Margot Begemann

SWWIM Every Day
by Jenna Le

by Jenna Le

I crumple marriage offers made by fishermen,

masons, bakers of brioche, for I know

my consecration is to marry the

great Van Gogh. Look at history and see

men of genius wrecked before there is

the chance for one brave girl to swoop down, dangerous

to his enemies and doubters, the

critics and hecklers, and save him from that storm.

My love shall be his shield, prevent the terrible.

No shy virgin, I’ve seen four decades; they

have handled me the way some clumsy half-

cocked violin restorer does a never-

again-same harp. I know the score. I found

Vincent living with his mother in these

snake-filled backwoods, where gossips embroider the dangers

of his past romancing of a whore. Sufficient

to say I’m not scared off. Inside me, too,

there is a prostitute and a barkeep,

a seamstress and a siren and a shore.

 

Note: In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh wrote about Margot Begemann, briefly his fiancée, “It’s a pity I didn’t meet her earlier—say 10 years ago or so. Now she gives me the impression of a Cremona violin that’s been spoiled in the past by bad bunglers of restorers.” He ended their relationship the same year it began. Margot drank poison but recovered.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Jenna Le (jennalewriting.com) authored Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018; 1st ed. pub. by Anchor & Plume, 2016), which won Second Place in the 2017 Elgin Awards. Her poetry appears in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, West Branch, and elsewhere.

Scorched

SWWIM Every Day
by Kami Westhoff

by Kami Westhoff

That August, smoke stitched itself to each breath’s tunneling wisp.

The lush lungs of your three-year-old tarred half-pack-a-day dark,

the veins in her eyes cragged crimson. The west was burning,

and without your repentance, your boyfriend said, you would too.

Afterward, your daughter said she didn't understand why your face

was blood-burst when her father told her to kiss you good-bye .

Or why your body, whose arms had lifted her when something 

she wanted was just out of reach, or held her back if that something

might hurt her, why it was rooms away from the lips that kissed better

every bump and bruise. 

By mid-September, your daughter’s lungs were crisped clean

with the ocean’s exhale, her sclera once more white as bone. 

The sky in the west again unflawed—nothing marring its blue

but the scribbled edges of pine trees and moody mountains.

He claimed he didn’t want to hurt you, but couldn’t argue

with a god that’s always wanted you dead. Always wanted

your blood a dark river beneath the earth’s scorched scars,

your body just the soil that swallows it.   

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Kami Westhoff’s chapbook, Sleepwalker, won the 2016 Dare to Be Award from Minerva Rising, and her collaborate chapbook, Your Body a Bullet, was published recently by Unsolicited Press. Her work has appeared in journals including Meridian, Carve, Third Coast, Phoebe, West Branch, the Pinch, and Waxwing. She teaches creative writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.

The Ladies Are Waiting

SWWIM Every Day
by Kristin Garth

by Kristin Garth

near guillotines, acclaimed headsmen of means.

Duplicitous gleams eyeing you, their thighs

secretly tattooed, surnames, killers, kings,

state-sanctioned blowjobs, beheadings so why

not princess—even you? One bed, one head,

misstep, or two, detected, collected, stored

fine wine uncorked, with lords, midnight, rust, red

aroma, royal deficiencies poured

some stone-floored cellar, behind arched oak doors.

A happy ending may require cunning,

a crown to topple, rolling heads on floors

ideally yours. Best sacrifice is queen.

Appeasement is the strategy you take.

They’re carnivores, and you serve them cake.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart Prize- and Best of the Net-nominated poet from Pensacola and a sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked magazines like Five: 2: One, Yes, Glass, Anti-Heroin Chic, Occulum, Drunk Monkeys, Luna Luna, TERSE. Journal, and many more. She is the author of the chapbooks Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Pensacola Girls (Bone & Ink Press), Shakespeare for Sociopaths (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, January 2019), and Puritan U (Rhythm & Bones Press, March 2019), as well as a full-length collection Candy Cigarette (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, April 2019). A Victorian Dollhousing Ceremony will also be published by Rhythm & Bones Press in June 2019. Follow her on Twitter @lolaandjolie or visit her at kristingarth.com.

I Cook Thanksgiving Dinner with My Dead Mother

SWWIM Every Day
by Diane K. Martin

by Diane K. Martin

Tucking the wings back under the bird’s body must have resurrected

her, because there was Mom, already chopping onions. We didn’t talk

about my lifestyle, my father, or the burnt-to-a crisp skin of my brilliant

career, nor did we chat about the time she stuffed the turkey with Saltines

because they were on sale at Raley’s, and everyone got so thirsty we all

got drunk, even the children. We didn’t reminisce about past Thanksgivings,

like the time I arrived late and my brother slammed the table and roared,

“We are not going to save her any goddamn salad.” Mom made a point

of reminding me that she set out a half grapefruit for my appetizer,

because I’m allergic to shrimp. We didn’t mention her bad heart—or mine.

We just chopped, boiled, simmered, stewed, sliced, roasted, and sautéed

in butter, and then twisted the turkey wing and tucked it under the body

of the bird, even though it meant breaking the bones a little bit to do it.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Diane K. Martin’s work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Field, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Plume, and many other journals. Her poems have been included in Best New Poets and have received a Pushcart Special Mention. Her first collection, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published in 2010 by Dream Horse Press. Her second book, Hue & Cry, is forthcoming from MadHat Press in September, 2019.

Street Scene

SWWIM Every Day
by Khadijah Lacina

by Khadijah Lacina

i watch

through

dusty

window

panes

the glide

and splash

of tires

on rainwet

streets

the hipcocked

mama sweet

sly on the

corner

laughing

at the old

man on

the bench

whose words

are pushed

down lost

in the

murmur

of leaves

pressed into

unyielding

asphalt

_______________________________________________________________________________________


Khadijah Lacina grew up in Wisconsin’s Kickapoo Valley, a magical place where back-to-the-landers and rednecks peacefully coexist. Today, she lives on a small homestead in rural Missouri with her children, goats, chickens, cats, and dogs. She is passionate about speaking up, working for change, and is writing a book about the years she spent in Yemen. She is a writer, teacher, translator, herbalist, and fiber artist. Her chapbook, Nightrunning, appeared in 2017 from Facqueuesol Books.

Beach

SWWIM Every Day
by Alexandra Corinth

by Alexandra Corinth

what is a body if not sand—

glass ground into fine

fragments of otherworldly shimmer

masked by the sum of skin and organs

dunes shift and crumble with time

touching everything, even the inside

of folds unseen or unknown

pieces of me lodged

in you

and isn’t it magic

how we are not we alone

how our scars fit into the narrative of these tides

how I breathe you in

how you exhale into my mouth

this sea is the same as our hands

70% of every gesture

moved by a great pull that doesn’t need a name

even though we do

part of me is already gone

eroded by you

or another starry being

and I smile

shining like the moon

on a quiet surf

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Alexandra Corinth is a disabled writer and artist based in DFW. She is also an editorial assistant for the Southwest Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Mayo Review, Mad Swirl, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Atticus Review, among others. Her poem, “A Guide for the Visitors of Solovetsky Monastery,” was chosen as a top 10 winner of the Writer’s Garret’s 2018 Common Language Project. You can find her online at typewriterbelle.com.

Expiration Date

SWWIM Every Day
by Risa Denenberg

by Risa Denenberg

I dream                                                a beating

fists and belt                                       look here, I say  

pointing to                                          my thighs

you missed                                          a spot

running                                                out of space

 

I want to live                  and               I don’t want to live like this                      

 

I dream                                                an inferno

coughing up blood                             air dense with smoke

perennial forest fires                          plum-colored bruises

on my palms                                       it takes some time                   

to unfurl                                              back to vertical

                             

I want to live                  and               I want to die

 

I dream                                               “the big one”

I brush off dirt                                    walk into a café

order a latte                                        I never ask

the birds                                             at the feeder

to share                                              their nectar with me                            

for them                                             it’s everlasting

 

I want to die                 and               I don’t want to die

 

I dream                                               a funeral pyre

the new passport                               expires in 2026

such is                                                the confidence

my government                                 has (in me)

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Risa Denenberg lives a quiet life on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state, and works as a nurse practitioner. She is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, publisher of lesbian/bi/trans poetry. She has published three full length collections of poetry, most recently, slight faith (MoonPath Press, 2018). Her poems have been published online and in print journals including Moria, HIV Here and Now, Calyx, Ithaca Lit, Spry, Permafrost, Jewish Currents, and Pittsburgh Poetry Review.

Prayer for The Old Woman in the Shoe

SWWIM Every Day
by Lisette Alonso

by Lisette Alonso

to the gods of dried milk and malnutrition,

the gods of wanting and outstretched hands.

her husband just kept putting babies in her,

is there a kinder way to say this out loud?

blessed was her body’s fertile soil, rich and

earthen and teeming with life until it wasn’t.

how after so many seasons the loam became

nutrient starved, begging mineral and rain,

but still the sky and earth conspired against her,

still the babies came and the husband, hallelujah,

less man than bull, less bovine than insatiable,

a predator stalking the bedposts, always anointing.

blessed were the babies, the sea of infants expelled

by her body, dragging her spirit behind like an umbilicus. 

forgive her, god of never, she couldn’t feed them all,

couldn’t find them in the dark to suckle them,

 

so that the littlest ones flared out like match heads,

and then what was left of her became ash and bramble,

her mouth numb as her breasts and the palms of her hands,

her head a terrible buzzing so she never spoke another word,

blessed were the children who remained, parceled out

to neighbors and kin, but the tiniest ghosts she kept

tucked like stones beneath her tongue, balled like fists

between her ribs, like prayers to an immovable god,

forever and ever amen.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Lisette Alonso is a south Florida native and holds an MFA from the University of Miami. She is the author of the chapbooks Wednesday’s Child (Porkbelly Press) and The Album of Untaken Photos(The Lune). Her poetry has appeared with New Letters, The Tishman Review, The Nashville Review, and Mothers Always Write.

On losing Aunt Temma & (her mother) Grandma “Weeza” in the same week

SWWIM Every Day
by Jennifer Wolkin

by Jennifer Wolkin

Fear of loss           is a neural pathway full of             trigger    

warnings laid down    to rest       after a                 first loss,

then fires         again &                        again

after each successive              loss, then fires                again

when no active loss                 is         looming

except that       now loss          always          looms

like bubbles     in an otherwise smooth                       syringe           

loss looms,      large,            even        while watching

the ocean meet the sky           as if,    to allude    the horizon

never   ends,         as if,   to allude       no one   ever      ends,           

a first loss    begets learning    loss exists,   learning loss

exists               begets fearing it                   begets  taking     

vital                 measures to perceive          control of

its timing              begets  sitting right                     in its eye            

instead of            being           hurricaned       with the   cruel

load of               having  to lose   with       no warning                       

with no provision            for the pain, for    the grief     

for the grief that grows,          for the grief          loss knows. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Wolkin is a health/neuro psychologist, speaker, writer, and mental health advocate. She is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing and literary translation at Queens College. Her poetry is published/forthcoming in multiple publications. Jen is most passionate about writing at the intersection where the mind, body, brain, and spirit meet—about the holistic human experience—through the eyes of both her own experience, and through her professional lens.

What I’m Saying Is

SWWIM Every Day
Lorena Parker Matejowsky

by Lorena Parker Matejowsky

I am saying the road to happiness is through hell

I am saying this road hurts my heels

You arrived at the wrong time

You arrived when he wasn’t home

I can see how a forest falls down

I can see a sinkhole from its source

I am trying to make a map out of muck

I am trying not to walk on the water

There is a trail that tastes like ghost orchids

There is a swamp sitting here with my son

I am talking about taking slow wet steps

I am talking about birds that stand still

I do this so I can show you the scrub jay

I do this like he will die any day.

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Lorena Parker Matejowsky is a resident of Central Florida but spent her first thirty years in Texas. Her poetry was selected for the 2018 AWP Intro Journal Prize and Best New Poets 2018 anthology. She's sorry about Florida and Texas, y'all.

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