What Mattered

SWWIM Every Day
by Joan Kwon Glass

by Joan Kwon Glass

When my father left,
his old leather couch
kept his shape.
When I climbed up
in my Sunday dress,
it was safe.
His absence held me
like a throne.

He was dead, or gone.
My mother saw me, or not.
Jesus was coming
or he wasn’t.
Eventually, it didn’t matter.

What mattered was my body
perched on the hill
behind our house
atop the emptying field
in spite of everything,

What mattered were the unseen
creatures that burrowed
beneath the hill, grinding forward
in the darkness.

What mattered was the familiar
hum of my own hunger,
how long I could go
without

as somewhere else,
loaves and fishes
multiplied.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Joan Kwon Glass is a biracial (Korean/Caucasian) second generation American who lives near New Haven, CT. Her poems have recently been published or are upcoming in Sublunary Review, FEED, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ghost City Review, Rise Up Review, Dying Dahlia Review, Black Napkin Press, Vagabond City Lit, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Literary Mama, the print anthology Shimmer Spring, and others. Her poem “Bathing Scene” was featured on the Saturday Poetry Series: Poetry as it Ought to Be, and her poem “Cartouche,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The Arc Light

The Arc Light

SWWIM Every Day
by Kylie Gellatly

by Kylie Gellatly


____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kylie Gellatly is a poet living in Western Massachusetts and a Frances Perkins Scholar at Mount Holyoke College. Her chapbook The Fever Poems is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her poetry has appeared in Malasaña Magazine and Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project, with book reviews in The Rumpus, Adroit Journal, Green Mountains Review, and Pleiades. She is the Book Reviews Editor for Green Mountains Review and is a reader for Pleiades and Anhinga Press. Kylie has been awarded the Factory Hollow Press Scholarship to the Juniper Writing Institute and has received two fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center. For more, visit www.kyliegellatly.com

The Virgin Eleousa

SWWIM Every Day
by Millie Tullis

by Millie Tullis

Mary
always framed

in folds
my mother

too wore
loose dresses

in church
her body

old wonder
working

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Millie Tullis is an MFA poetry candidate at George Mason University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Sugar House Review, Rock & Sling, Ninth Letter, Juked, GingerbreadHouse Literary Magazine, Mud Season Review, and elsewhere. She serves as the Assistant Editor for Best of the Net and Poetry Editor and Social Media Manager for Phoebe. She lives and writes in Northern Virginia.

Elegy for Kurt

SWWIM Every Day
by Susannah W. Simpson

by Susannah W. Simpson


Psychiatric Ward, Bed 23 Window


When pleaded with to finish
your dinner tray, you say:

I am contemplating the virtues
of the mind vs. the sins of the flesh.

You believed, to feed yourself
fed all Evil in the world.

As war news blossomed on TV,
you became thinner, then cadaverous.

A doctor’s son, you had been stuffed
full of promise, Catholic school and Latin verbs.

Lamb of God—you take away
the sins of the world, have mercy.

Soon your crisp, plaid shirts and khaki
pants hung and billowed, sails on the mast,

and your speech came like purple loosestrife
along the expressway, unexpected bursts of color

shuddering from the sheer force
of what passes by.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Susannah W. Simpson’s work has been published in The Homestead Review, North American Review, Potomac, The Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, SWWIM, Xavier Review among others. Her poem “Lily” was anthologized in Full Moon and Foxglove by Three Drops Press, UK, and her book Geography of Love & Exile was published by Cervena Barva Press (2016). Susannah holds an MFA from Bennington and a PhD from SUNY/Binghamton. She is the founder and co-director of the Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches Reading Series and an Associate Editor for the South Florida Poetry Journal.

Softball At 60

SWWIM Every Day
by Annie Breitenbucher

by Annie Breitenbucher


is more slow
waltz than hip hop.
A stretch at first is more
awkward lunge than shiny ballet.
I’ve dropped from first to ninth in the
batting order—and so stand at the batting
cage among those who cannot envision that
movement requires effort. Thinking I’ve earned
either their admiration or pity. Wondering if
they’ve started to smell the leather and
grass, hear the pop of the ball in
the mitt, feel the slight breeze
that slows the heart beat,
see the dirt it hurts
so much to leave.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Annie Breitenbucher is a technical writer living in Minneapolis; she previously worked for the Star Tribune newspaper where she covered the sports of running and triathlon. Her first poetry collection, Fortune, was published by the Laurel Poetry Collective. She has also had work published in two anthologies: Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press) and The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks: Poems of Loss and Renewal by Minnesota Poets (Nodin).

My Mother Says Covid is Easy,

SWWIM Every Day
by Hayley Mitchell Haugen

by Hayley Mitchell Haugen

at least we are safe in our homes.
She thinks of her own mother
during the Blitz—four kids,
and bombs dropping, sandbagging
the incendiaries, the rationing,
evacuating to awful conditions,
and the “doodlebugs?” I think of shabby
Ohio hotels, the lice my sons brought home
from preschool. But really, the Nazi missiles
looked like small planes, Vengeance Weapons,
they called them, buzz-bombs, fired
by the hundreds into south-east England each day,
their jet engines whirring like a field of common insects:
when the motors cut out, the bombs fell.
Imagine having that fear constantly,
my mother says. Once, my Nana heard
that tell-tale stop and her body did the thinking:­
she threw the infant—my mother—
into the indoor shelter just before the blast,
just before the glass doors exploded.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hayley Mitchell Haugen holds a PhD in English from Ohio University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington; she is Professor of English at Ohio University Southern in southeastern Ohio. Light & Shadow, Shadow & Light from Main Street Rag Publishing Company (2018) is her first full-length poetry collection, and her chapbook, What the Grimm Girl Looks Forward To is from Finishing Line Press (2016). She edits Sheila-Na-Gig online (https://sheilanagigblog.com/) and Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.

Bend

SWWIM Every Day

by Natalie Martell

April 2020

unable to sleep, i stare at blue light
late into the night—death tolls, ransacked shelves,
bleeding maps. poison, but also remedy—
abby’s message about violets & morels in her yard,
your photo of a home altar: red cloth
holding oak cross, water & flame, dried lavender,
cedar, a rosary of small moons. i think of your craving
for touch & ask the moonlight to brush fingers
through your hair in seattle. soak you in glowing
until you drip with it. somehow, mom, the days keep
breaking. spring is a myth every year
until it unfurls. still, my body is a molting tree—
at the slightest wind i flake shards of myself
to the dirt, falling a hundred times over. instead of working,
i read about microbial life surviving in frozen lava
beneath the ocean floor. inside microscopic fissures
& the pressure of atmospheres, the cells shiver,
alive. i gaze at van gogh paintings
on the met website. the full image shows a fused
landscape, but mom, in the close-ups, the scene
shatters. iridescent movement blooms in wet ribbons,
writhing like fish. i can witness each reckless flight
of the artist’s hand, rendering cypress & wheat
from tangled ochre, titanium, ultramarine. all is illuminated:
the anguish of his gestures, the quivering gashes of darkness
where time has fractured the strokes. why does beauty
make me ache? the brushstrokes sing & grate
against my bones. mom, i saw your bird again
today. i believe you sent it from cherry-blossomed streets
lined with boarded-up windows. on a branch outside
my room, a black-capped chickadee’s two-note song
bends down as though to mourn, as though in prayer.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Natalie Martell is a queer writer living in southern Minnesota and working with adults with different abilities. She received her MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salt Hill, Flyway, and elsewhere.

Bend

SWWIM Every Day
by Natalie Martell

by Natalie Martell


April 2020

unable to sleep, i stare at blue light
late into the night—death tolls, ransacked shelves,
bleeding maps. poison, but also remedy—
abby’s message about violets & morels in her yard,
your photo of a home altar: red cloth
holding oak cross, water & flame, dried lavender,
cedar, a rosary of small moons. i think of your craving
for touch & ask the moonlight to brush fingers
through your hair in seattle. soak you in glowing
until you drip with it. somehow, mom, the days keep
breaking. spring is a myth every year
until it unfurls. still, my body is a molting tree—
at the slightest wind i flake shards of myself
to the dirt, falling a hundred times over. instead of working,
i read about microbial life surviving in frozen lava
beneath the ocean floor. inside microscopic fissures
& the pressure of atmospheres, the cells shiver,
alive. i gaze at van gogh paintings
on the met website. the full image shows a fused
landscape, but mom, in the close-ups, the scene
shatters. iridescent movement blooms in wet ribbons,
writhing like fish. i can witness each reckless flight
of the artist’s hand, rendering cypress & wheat
from tangled ochre, titanium, ultramarine. all is illuminated:
the anguish of his gestures, the quivering gashes of darkness
where time has fractured the strokes. why does beauty
make me ache? the brushstrokes sing & grate
against my bones. mom, i saw your bird again
today. i believe you sent it from cherry-blossomed streets
lined with boarded-up windows. on a branch outside
my room, a black-capped chickadee’s two-note song
bends down as though to mourn, as though in prayer.

_______________________________________________________________

Natalie Martell is a queer writer living in southern Minnesota and working with adults with different abilities. She received my MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salt Hill, Flyway, and elsewhere.

The Big Picture

SWWIM Every Day
by Lupita Eyde-Tucker

by Lupita Eyde-Tucker


I don’t need anything
from your trip across town
though I always wrack my brain
for that elusive thing
that might complete the chore,
the day, perhaps my life.

I don’t need anything
from the store, nothing
that can be bought or sold
definitely not one more thing
to add to the pile of things
filling up my closets now.

I don’t need anything, really,
except a moment of your time
to look at this picture of a duck.
It’s not a great picture,
But that’s not the point,
you see, I am the duck.

Indulge me a moment longer.
to look at the duck a different way.
See something new?
It’s also a picture of a rabbit.
I am the rabbit. Yes, I can also be a rabbit.

I don’t need anything. Nothing
bought or sold, but thanks
for taking time to look at my picture,
which is really what I want most.
But please—don’t get stuck on the rabbit.
I am still, and will also always be, the duck.


____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lupita Eyde-Tucker writes and translates poetry in English and Spanish. She's the winner of the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize for Poetry, and her poems appear in Nashville Review, Asymptote, Columbia Journal, Raleigh Review, Women's Voices for Change, Yemassee, and Chautauqua. She's currently translating two collections of poetry by Venezuelan poet Oriette D'Angelo. Lupita and her husband live and homeschool their children in Florida. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Florida. Read more of her poems at: www.NotEnoughPoetry.com

Paloma

SWWIM Every Day
by Mary Block

by Mary Block

A little bitter, like eating a grapefruit
with my grandfather,
with his tiny, toothy knife
designed specifically for the job.
A father of daughters,
he’d learned how to eat without wincing.
He knew how to leave for work
or whatever.
To leave the girls at home.

The boys catch sharks and barracuda
in a boat roaring back at the ocean
cracking against its rigid hull.
This city was built to defy the weather.
It was pulled from the sea
by boat builders in exile—
people raised with the knowledge
that pigeon and dove are two shades
of the same bird.

Between my dreams I tried to remember
the name for a lookout.
Nest came back to me first, then crow.
I blessed my boy with the flesh
of a sour fruit, with salt,
with the sign of the cross.
The school has hired a guard with a gun
but still.
I fed my boy my body
for so long.


_______________________________________________________________

Mary Block is a Miami-born, Miami-based poet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Sonora Review, and others. Her poems can be read online at SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a Best of the Net finalist, A Ruth Lilly Fellowship finalist, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. More at www.maryblock.net

On Watching "Arrival" During Quarantine

SWWIM Every Day
by Natalia Conte

by Natalia Conte

Like all dark moments, their entrance
begins with cello, a low grating C
like the bow of a ship digging into ice.

I know there’s danger in the rippling
of sound, the way the air seems to boil
with urgency. Of course, this signals

their arrival, the aliens, their bodies like hands
reaching from halted wrists.
Dr. Banks keeps her hands close

to her body to stop them from shaking.
She scrawls the word human
on a small whiteboard, points inward.

Drawn in dense billows of ink,
their language chases its own tail
does not distinguish between beginnings

and endings. We cannot write with two hands
synchronously, our mind can’t know
where the phrase may go if given the chance

to roam. I am more conscious of my hands
than ever before, the way they hang, palmy,
like nothing good. I wish I could stop

their tendency to reach for everything,
try to cradle every moment in case
it’s the last of its kind, a near

extinct species. Moments of sharing
sweat with strangers under concert light,
bodies being stirred into movement by the

same beat. Empty gestures of goodbyes
when we knew we would see each other
soon. Touching hands without glass between.

I’ve never wanted to hold anything like I want
to hold language like a mathematician
break its parts into sequences

and make small moments
mean more. I want an algorithm
for the feeling of fearing

your own kind, a lack
of variables in the equation
for compassion. I want

to touch each syllable where the
meaning lives, watch them quake
under the tug of my pen, its little billow.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Natalia Conte is an MFA candidate at NC State University for Poetry. She has been previously published in So To Speak Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, and others. She has been nominated for Best New Poets and is an assistant poetry editor at Narrative Magazine. She works at a busy coffee shop in Raleigh, NC where she also resides with her tiny black cat Zen.

Versos/Verses

SWWIM Every Day

by Maria Teresa Horta translated by Edite Cunhā and M.B. McLatchey

São os versos
os crepúsculos
são os dias

são os mares
a saliva
a mão aberta

na luz de bruços
ao meio-dia
são os gestos abissais, a dor incerta

São os verbos
os segredos
a alquimia

são os doces
lábios
e o seu excesso

os impulsos do gesto
onde se erguia
o contorno do corpo mais perverso

São as vozes
singulares
as melodias

são os rigores
das formas
mais diversas

a inventarem-se só
porque impediam
uma ansiosa posse tão incerta

São as sílabas
intactas
as utopias

o torpe
o passado
o pesadelo

sonhado durante
a alvorada
o suor alagando o meu cabelo

São as dúvidas, possivelmente a noite
no labor da escrita desatada
tudo aquilo que é táctil e por dentro
se enovela no fio da madrugada

Por vezes surge ainda um gesto mais sedento
e em seguida o voo, o golpe de uma faca
no lado voraz do pensamento
quando o amor não quer dizer mais nada

They’re the verses
the twilight
they’re the days

they’re the seas
the saliva
the open hand

in the back-light
at noon
they’re the abyssal gestures, the uncertain pain

They’re the verbs
the secrets
the alchemy

they’re the sweet
lips
and their excess

the impulses of the gesture
where rose up
the contour of the body most perverse

They’re the voices
singular
the melodies

they’re the rigors
of the forms
most diverse

inventing themselves simply
because they prevented
an anxious possession so uncertain

They’re the syllables
intact
the utopias

the clumsy
the past
the nightmare

dreamt during
the dawn
the sweat drenching my hair

They’re the doubts, possibly the night
in the labor of unfettered writing
everything that is tactile and internal
entwines itself in the thread of dawn

Sometimes an even more thirsty gesture surges
and then the flight, the stroke of a knife
to the voracious side of reflection
when love has nothing more to say

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Maria Teresa Horta was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1937. At 82 years old, Horta continues to be recognized for her association with two fellow poets, Maria Isabel Barreno and Maria Velho da Costa. In 1971, during the fascist Estado Novo regime, the three women (known thereafter as “The Three Marias”) wrote a collaborative work entitled Novas Cartas Portuguese (New Portuguese Letters). The book was banned, resulting in a trial that attracted worldwide attention and identified the three writers as feminist icons. In 1974 the regime fell, and the charges were dropped. Nevertheless, the imprint of an oppressive regime endured for Horta—both in her consciousness and in her poetry.

Horta has always considered herself, first and foremost, a poet. She has published 21 collections of poetry. She has also worked as a journalist for several Lisbon publications during the 1960s (one of the few women to do so) and interviewed such renowned literary figures as Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, and Christa Wolf. She edited the magazine, Mulheres (Women), and wrote plays and fiction pieces. She is most renowned as a poet and political activist. She lives in Portugal.

Edite Cunhā is a writer, artist, and activist who believes that creativity can transform the individual as well as society. She leads multi-media art and writing workshops for people of all ages. Cunhā has a BA from Smith College and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She lives in Massachusetts.

M.B. McLatchey earned her graduate degree in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, her Master of Art in Teaching at Brown University, and her B.A. from Williams College. She was awarded the American Poet Prize from the American Poetry Journal; she won the 2013 May Swenson Award for her debut poetry collection, The Lame God (Utah State Univ. Press), and Finalist Place in the New Women’s Voices Competition for her book Advantages of Believing (Finishing Line Press). Her most recent book, Beginner’s Mind, will be published with Regal House Publishing in 2021 and explores the question, “How should we educate our children?” Currently serving as Florida’s Poet Laureate for Volusia County, she is an Associate Professor of Classics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Visit her at www.mbmclatchey.com.

Stanch

SWWIM Every Day
by Katherine Fallon

by Katherine Fallon


I kept finding your things: a drop of blood
that took root in the carpet of your bedroom,

your mother's antique trivet, the Beta fish
we got together. He was red, or violent blue,

and lived in a canning jar. He was the seven
swift cuts along your arm when he swam

like a whip toward his food, was the current
at thaw, the sound of ice floes crashing

against the river’s still-frozen banks, the days
we forgot him for each other. I loved him

more with you gone. One night I left him
by the window too long and he grew a suit

of hirsute frost. In places, he glowed through
the dull rime, lustrous as mineral, much like

the way your makeshift tourniquet—
bleached white dishcloth I held with one hand

as we rushed through town in the snow—
had bloomed into showmanship.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Katherine Fallon is the author of The Toothmaker's Daughters (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Colorado Review, Juked, Meridian, Foundry, and Best New Poets 2019, among others. She shares domestic space with two cats and her favorite human, who helps her zip her dresses.

Foundation

SWWIM Every Day
by Jessica Cuello

by Jessica Cuello



I turned five years old
forty years ago and sat
on the back steps waiting
for my father for a visit

Waiting for his last visit
my back to the house
on the gravel steps
where the railing rusted

loose in the cement rusted
off and the house was
condemned When the landlord
died the metal and gravel crumbled

back into earth crumbled
into dust except the basement
stayed behind still intact
Even in the ancient

world outlines of ancient
houses stay Tourists kneel
on the ground to touch the sites
Mostly they make a single visit

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jessica Cuello is the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). She has been awarded The 2017 CNY Book Award, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. New poems can be found or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, On the Seawall, Jet Fuel Review, Tinderbox, and Image. She is co-poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review.

Wild Ode to the Catfish Splashing in Alta Lake

SWWIM Every Day
by Emma Miao

by Emma Miao

He’s twirling three feet
ahead of the reporter’s yellowed boots,
searching for prey before migrating south.

Someone’s thrown rotten cheese into
the lake, leftover from pasta night, a fuzzy
cube half-buried under pebbles, visible

in the moonlit clear. The catfish eyes it, brushing
with its silver whiskers. A twitch later, it’s gone.
It has been a month since I could taste anything.

Catfish find aromas irresistible,
unlike me, eyes closed, struggling to remember
the taste of charred chicken. Catfish have a hundred

thousand taste buds within and around
their blue-black bodies, while I lay here, lemon
juice running down my chin, aching for a fizzle

on the tongue, to peel
back this numb, wet mouth,
the promise of zest dancing on the wind.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Emma Miao is a Chinese-Canadian poet from Vancouver, BC. Her poems appear in Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Emerson Review, Rising Phoenix Review, and Up the Staircase Quarterly, among others. The winner of the F(r)iction Poetry Contest 2020 and a finalist for the Yemmasee Poetry Contest 2020, Emma is a Commended Foyle Young Poet 2019, a COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective Fellow, and an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. Her spoken word + piano album, Oscillation, is forthcoming this winter. Tweet her @emmaamiao.

Confessions of a Pregnant Bride

SWWIM Every Day
by Geula Geurts

by Geula Geurts

I used to be the wind, not the veil fluttering in its path.
I used to be the veil, not the woman obscured, a white flag
waving over her face, surrendered. I swore I’d never marry

& here I am, pressed into a delicate dress, twelve weeks
of fetus simmering inside. I am hemmed
into a laugh, drunk under the scaffold of canopy, smile

bright with heartburn. Has anyone noticed?
I used to have one heart, not three trembling all at once.
The lilies in my bouquet are just another smell I can’t bear.

One more week & I could’ve let my mammal loose.
I used to suck in my tummy for fun. What is a façade
without the bones behind it, the bedrock upon which we stand?

I want to grab the microphone & say it: there was no will you
marry me? My love looked beyond my skeleton and said:
will you be the mother of my children? A proposal that ended

in unprotected hunger. The rest is a spectacle of wedding.
For family, friends. The ring is the umbilical cord, the placenta
is the vow. I count three flashes of jagged light

when I close my eyes. One for each of my animal hearts.
The happiest day of my life? I was so ravenous I could’ve eaten
the groom. I didn’t, and that is called sacrifice.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Geula Geurts is a Dutch-born poet and essayist living in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of the Shaindy Rudolph Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University. Her mini chapbook, Like Any Good Daughter, was published by Platypus Press. She was named a finalist in the 2018 Autumn House Chapbook Contest and a semifinalist in the 2020 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, The Penn Review, Blood Orange Review, New South, River Heron Review, Tinderbox Editions, and Counterclock, among others. She works as a literary agent at the Deborah Harris Agency.

To Sarah on the Shortest Day of the Year

SWWIM Every Day
by Elizabeth Vignali

by Elizabeth Vignali

Clouded sky, a huckleberry moon
hidden up there somewhere. It’s night

nearly all day. I think about you
and your pocketful of paper matches

gone damp in the rain. The convocation
of flares we left behind. My pocketful

of cigarette butts, my pocketful of ash.
How many hearts broken between us

and pasted back together with the sticky
remains of rum and chewing gum.

Once I thought your voice would save me.
I’m sorry for that. In the dark I walk

the labyrinth lined with pebbles
and seashells and smooth broken

bits of green bottles and remember
July’s light: campfire, a setting sun,

flashlight beams stravaging the trail,
waves shocked into bioluminescence,

each flame struck tender and vincible
and in a flash extinguished.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Vignali is the author of three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019), and the forthcoming poetry collection, House of the Silverfish (Unsolicited Press 2021). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works as an optician, produces the Bellingham Kitchen Session reading series, and serves as poetry editor of Sweet Tree Review.

Distances

SWWIM Every Day
by Esther Sadoff

by Esther Sadoff

Like windows between windows,
solid air encapsulates the space between us.
A faint shadow separates sight from occurrence.
My thoughts overflow into the distant
horizon like Rapunzel lingering in extremity,
weaving last-minute silk into ladders.
Her tears restored vision
to a prince who still felt far away,
as if touching a thing meant you could keep it,
as if the world were made of balconies
spilling onto other balconies,
as if all you had to do was let your hair
down and see who climbed back up.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Esther Sadoff currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she teaches English to gifted and talented middle school students. She has a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied literature as well as a Master of Education from The Ohio State University. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in The 2River View, The Bookends Review, River River, SWIMM Every Day, Marathon Literary Review, Sunspot Literary Journal, West Trade Review, and River Mouth Review.

Does Anyone Know Where to Begin?

SWWIM Every Day
by Chloe Firetto-Toomey

by Chloe Firetto-Toomey

Three sections inspired by eco-documentaries

Mum and I visit the Sistine Chapel and agree
it is one ornate question: cherubs with spears,

gold-threaded shadows, massacres in the tapestries.
People gather like crows or cells or clouds, taking pictures.

Michelangelo’s distant fingers
so high, the altar so small.

Recall Sagrada Familia, doves chiseled in the masonry.
Gaudi’s lungs of light, harnessing

every hue in stoned-carved hallows—
This is how man should capture everything.

Witness the body’s departure

:: shaped by wind, carved into the mouths of birds ::
:: a pyre flickers on still water ::
two modes of reckoning.

Snub-nosed monkeys
in robes, munching lichen.

A circus of parrots in the canopies.
Jellyfish, immortal, unless eaten.

Is death another word for home;
departure or arrival?

:: :: ::

Walking with the archeologist
along the old river line
scanning for clam-shell clusters,
conch spines, divots in the bedrock.

He stops to select an oblong object
from the dirt. Coprolite, he says,
fossilized human shit, and holds it up for me.
A dark and slender root which he places in a Ziploc.

We wander to the edge of Little River,
:: glimpse the water :: as you might glimpse ::
patches of sky from a New York alleyway.

Styrofoam icebergs dissipate to snow balls::
mint flotsam, peppered and oiled;

an abandoned washing machine
embedded in the riverbed.
All our empty packages
tripped up-wind,
to crowd
gutters,
to settle
here on surface
and seabed.


Then, movement: a paddle-tail
disturbs the rubbled water,

dislodges plastic bags and bottles—
two manatees surface, wastelands bob
against their large grey bodies.

It could be a clip from an eco-documentary, I say,

manatees return home as guests. [1]

:: :: ::



There's nothing wild. There's no wilderness. It's all home [2]

A freighter ship trundles through the arctic sea
dwarfing icebergs

black bow
arrowing the hazed water

:: a polar bear curled on the black rocks

hind legs tucked
to elbows
head bowed
on fore-paw

mourning the vibrancy of glaciers ::

Did a wild and invasive species take refuge in us
while we were sleeping?

Gannets nosedive
for the secrets sardines keep
while the world binges
on moon pies, medias, and
food-shaped candy,
heads turned away from the window.

90 percent of the goods we consume are brought to us by ship. [3]

[1] “24 Snow” directed by Mikhail Barynin (Environmental film festival)
[2] Ray Reitze in “Guided” directed by Bridget Besaw (Environmental film festival)
[3] "Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping " directed by Denis Delestrac


_____________________________________________________________________________________________________


Chloe Firetto-Toomey has an MFA degree from Florida International University. She taught nonfiction at Everglades Correctional Institution (pre-lockdown), and is an author assistant. She is a two-time finalist in Tupelo Quarterly's Prose Open Contest and a finalist in Diagram's chapbook contest. She won the 2017 Christopher F. Kelly Award for Poetry and 2020 Scotti Merrill Award for poetry. Her chapbook of poems, Little Cauliflower, was published in 2019 by Dancing Girl Press.



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