by Sara Ries Dziekonski
Look at me with those crooked bangs and baggy shorts
by Anastasia Jill
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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She has a home,
A beautiful home,
Inhumed on the pages
Where she draws—
She was never good at history,
So we recreate our own
Laced in paint,
Like on a cave,
In various colors.
There are rocks in my blood
To be unearthed,
Martial secrets
Stowed inside her kidneys
That can only come out in a lie.
We can’t lie to each other.
Instead, we settle for truth.
And this, right here, is my truth:
She is lawful, and that scares me.
What’s more, she senses the chickens
Poking fun at my marrow with their beaks,
Giving my shadow room to breathe,
A chance to escape.
She sees the other girls
Who’ve left me alone in bed,
The men who’ve forced me
To stay in theirs.
She sees that I feel unlovable,
Undeserving of her crafts.
She picks up a pencil,
She sees me, still,
And continues to draw.
The woman on the page is strong,
Virtuous as a helmet.
There is aftermath that’s not my fault—
I am standing tall, but that’s not
The real focus.
There are walls behind me,
Two arms, and a roof.
There is nothing holding it up.
We are all free-standing structures.
This home, it is beautiful.
She made it just for me.
This may be just a story,
But it’s one she tells
Until it's our truth.
Fabulist me;
I want to hear it one more time.
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Anastasia Jill (she/they) is a queer writer living in Central Florida. She has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and several other honors. Her work has been featured or is upcoming with Poets.org, Sundog Lit, Pithead Chapel, Contemporary Verse 2, OxMag, Broken Pencil, and more. Follow her on Instagram @anastasiajillies.
by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick
You’ll miss the moth that thumbed between
your window, at twenty, & its silk-spun
morse code for yearning. But there it is,
the expanse between it-could-be & it-already-
has-been. Your babe’s outgrown the swaddle.
Your mother stopped trying to know you &
there’s no coffin filled with sparrows
at the end. It’s an uneasy profile, grief.
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Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick's work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Gulf Coast Journal, Salamander Magazine, The Texas Observer, The Missouri Review, Four Way Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Passages North, among others. Hardwick serves as the Editor-in-Chief for The Boiler Journal.
by Emily Patterson
The river’s edge teems with leafy
groundcover, tiny forest
that steals the sound from our steps.
In its lushness, you stumble silently
in search of stems that glow. Soon
you turn toward me again, petals
starring your chin, stems in your hand
reduced to their centers—and really,
I can understand why you’d want
to consume their color, to get close
to that wild beauty, to know it
in a whole-bodied way. Later
when you lie on the grass, twigs
catching in your curls, I do the same:
watching you watch the branches
etch a web against the pale sky. At least,
this is what I think you see, but perhaps
it’s pinecones, or the wind, or something
unknowable in your growing mind.
In my own mind I wonder how we
got here, how once my body carried
yours, but now your wonder
enfolds us both, opens me up each
morning like a field feasting on light.
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Emily Patterson is the author of So Much Tending Remains (Kelsay Books, 2022). She received her B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University, where she was awarded the Marie Drennan Prize for Poetry, and her M.A. in Education from The Ohio State University. Emily’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in Rust and Moth, Minerva Rising Press, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Sunlight Press, Mom Egg Review, Literary Mama, and elsewhere.
by Mildred Kiconco Barya
A bearded stranger puts a crystal ball into my hands.
There’s a chick inside, a few days to hatching.
Its skinny body is diaphanous white and moves—
muscles, tissues, organs—a faint, beating heart
inside a thin membrane of amniotic fluid.
I squeeze the ball lightly and my heart skips a beat.
Cluck-cluck. I close my eyes and see the image of
Lot’s wife, eyes petrified. The ground opens and traps
her body in a pillar of white and pink Himalayan salt
rising from her feet all the way to the top of her head
like a shroud. As it thickens, a few particles fall back
and form a foundation where her feet had been.
I do not understand what this image has to do with me
or the chick, which I believe is innocent in all this.
I find myself thinking about Paradise,
wishing that the chickens would be in it.
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Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer from Uganda and assistant professor at UNC-Asheville. She has published three poetry books and her fourth poetry collection, The Animals of My Earth School, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books, 2023. Her prose, hybrids, and poems are published in Joyland, Shenandoah, The Cincinnati Review, Tin House, Matters of Feminist Practice Anthology, and elsewhere. She coordinates the Poetrio Reading Events at Malaprop’s Independent Bookstore/Café in Asheville. See mildredbarya.com.
by Annie Stenzel
(with a deep bow to Bruce Lee)
That’s when she said it: be like water.
or maybe it was, Oh Annie!
just be like water.
And I wanted to, then.
But water behaves or misbehaves
in all those mysterious ways.
Ocean water alone does a dozen
different things—before breakfast.
The Mississippi is a different creature
from the Nile.
And what about ice,
which is absolute water.
Or water forced by a massive dam
to drown a canyon? That’s one thing.
The run-off after helicopters dump
scooped-up water on a wildfire? Another.
Or maybe she meant a forest pool, quietly
hosting water-striders.
Well, remember how shocked we were,
in science class, to find out
the human body is 60 percent H2O?
I’m already a quick cascade through a weir.
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Annie Stenzel (she/her) was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her full-length collection is The First Home Air After Absence. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, Chestnut Review, Gargoyle, Kestrel, Lily Poetry, Nixes Mate, On the Seawall, SWWIM Every Day, Thimble, and The Lake, among others. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.
by Susan Barry-Schulz
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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by Lisa St. John
Perhaps I left
it in the violet
dusk, near the drowsy hum
of the bees’ nest.
Perhaps I let it fall
from my hands
at the river’s
edge.
Perhaps it is in
the belly
of the wolf—
the alpha
who watches me
at night as I sharpen
the knife,
pare away
at loss;
whittling
it down,
down.
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Lisa St. John is a writer living in upstate New York. Her chapbook, Ponderings, is available on her website at lisachristinastjohn.com. Her first full-length book of poetry, Swallowing Stones, is forthcoming from Kelsay Day Books. Lisa has published her poetry in journals such as The Poet’s Billow, Light, Entropy Magazine, The Poetry Distillery, Poets Reading the News, and Chronogram Magazine. Lisa’s nonfiction work has been published in Grief Digest and Sleet Magazine.
by Xiaoly Li
A photo on my cellphone—a mother holding her newborn baby
whose head is wrapped in gauze. The grandmother lies on a cot
staring at them. The gloomy basement, peeling walls.
They seem to hear sirens, shelling, explosions outside.
Another photo—women hold guns,
waiting to be called to the battlefield.
One raises her head, I tremble at her young face.
I see no end to the deep end.
In the chat groups from my motherland, my compatriots
fight online—some burn with anger, some spill words as knives,
some excuse the present by retelling the past, and some prepare a toast.
Suffocated, I drink a glass of sparkling cider, drive to Horn Pond.
Winter and spring battle out here—
Some parts of the pond are still frozen, shining like frosted glass.
Some crack to the blue abyss.
Some flow water with imprinted white clouds.
The swan pair swim to shore,
open their mouths with hissing squeaks.
I don't know if we are friends or foes,
but repeated encounters have formed a ritual.
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Xiaoly Li is a poet and photographer in Massachusetts. She is a 2022 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant in Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Spillway, American Journal of Poetry, PANK, Atlanta Review, Chautauqua, Rhino, Cold Mountain Review, J Journal, and elsewhere; her work has been featured on Verse Daily and in several anthologies. Her photography has been shown and sold in galleries in Boston.
by Julia Lisella
And then the heart shows itself
inside the small bloody packet
among the other organs
someone scraped and then neatly gathered
into this waxy paper, sealed, and slipped
back into the carcass
in a packing plant somewhere in Tennessee—
it spills out with the liver, the chewy other organs.
The dog below me is eager; he will take
what I give him of this.
Into the shallow Farberware pan from the set
my mother gave me more than 30 years ago,
its black handle wiggly in my hand,
I plunk the parts: the backbone that I cut with the kitchen scissors,
then hacked at with a heavy blade to pull
away from the rest of the small beast
and curved into the bottom of the pan,
and these other parts, the fat squat neck
with skin still clinging,
the nearly black liver that slips and slides
dragging its ink-red liquid with it, the tough gizzard
I can’t cut through, the kidneys, dark like the liver
but shapely in the pan, and then the smallest
organ, the triangle shaped heart.
Each one is more the history of this animal
than the wings, the breast, the thighs
we humans will eat.
Then I watch the steaming water transform each part
from raw to cooked. I’ll feed my dog
the wiry meat from the neck
and spine, wonder if the gizzards
are too tough for him.
But at the liver and kidney and heart,
the best parts? I stop. That’s all that separates us
I think—that heart in the pan and my heart
in the wave of light above.
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Julia Lisella’s books include Always (WordTech Editions, 2014), Terrain (WordTech Editions, 2007), and a chapbook, Love Song Hiroshima (Finishing Line Press, 2004). Her poems are widely anthologized, and are forthcoming or appear in Pangyrus, Lily Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Paterson Literary Review, Mom Egg Review, Nimrod, Exit 7, Ocean State Review, and others. She is a professor of English at Regis College, and co-curates the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) Reading Series in Boston. Her newest collection, Our Lively Kingdom, was named a finalist in the Lauria/Frasca poetry prize and was published by Bordighera Press in 2022.
by Anna B. Sutton
The doctor draws a pixelated circle
around a photograph of the Moon’s surface
and says, I’m pretty sure it’s a girl.
The photo is not of the Moon’s surface—
though I wouldn’t fault you for thinking
it was. The photo, with its tempestuous swirl
of whites and grays, is of our daughter’s
hazy labia. We call the Moon a woman
but the face inside it a man. I call the fetus
creature because I think it will hurt less
if someday I leave the hospital empty-handed.
We are always naming things
what they are not. The creature thumps
against my abdomen like a squirrel
barreling along my body’s roof, runs
like a rain-fat creek across my cervix. The collision
of two women—Earth and Theia—once birthed
the Moon. Every terrible man fed on the body
of a woman, then fled to set fires and leave them
burning. I would rather this child not be meat
or tinder, but ash-streaked vengeance. I would
rather her be what we see when we peer
at the photograph—tornado of heat and shadow,
suggestion of something that can’t quite be defined.
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Anna B. Sutton (she/her) is a poet and therapist. Her debut collection, Savage Flower, won the 2019 St. Lawrence Book Award and was published by Black Lawrence Press. Individual pieces appear in Indiana Review, Third Coast, Copper Nickel, and other journals. She received her MFA from UNC Wilmington and a James Merrill fellowship from Vermont Studio Center. She was a co-founder of the Porch Writers' Collective and has worked for numerous literary organizations.
by Hilary Varner
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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by Dagne Forrest
Although they are grown,
the children have remained.
The world outside our door
a new kind of ruin, not ready
for them yet. And it’s easier
to stand sentinel when they
are nearby, still within reach,
even if that’s an illusion.
You might notice a flickering
from this heart and it’s not
from a lack of fire or constancy.
It’s just that we’ve been without
power here since one of the latest
electrical storms rolled through.
I’m hooked up to a generator
which creates noise and smoke.
There isn’t a lot of fuel
and we had to make hard choices.
The food in the fridge and freezer
spoiled, but there are cans and an
opener, unruly plants in the garden.
No computers or fans,
of course. Just enough to keep
this relic of a muscle going.
It churns out enough wattage
for daily love and reassurance,
as well as a small reckoning
on the page, nothing more.
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Dagne Forrest's poetry has appeared in journals in Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK. In 2021 she was one of 15 poets featured in The League of Canadian Poets’ annual Poem in Your Pocket campaign, had a poem shortlisted for the UK's Bridport Prize, and won first prize in the Hammond House Publishing International Literary Prize (Poetry). Her creative nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Lake Effect, Paper Dragon, and Sky Island Journal.
by Joan Kwon Glass
We ride the train into Manhattan
to see the Broadway show Hadestown,
and I wonder how anyone can call this story
romantic. All I can think about is how stupid
Orpheus is—so close to a happily-ever-after,
and he fucked it up like only a man tragically can.
All he had to do was walk out of hell with her
long enough to be worthy of love.
Later, at a new Dada exhibit,
we stand in a room where our footsteps echo,
where we don’t have language to name anything,
not even each other. Anything can
be art, even the space between us.
By sundown, it feels like we’ve walked
every inch of the city and the miles ache
my feet into remembering that I am
connected to my body,
the body I try so hard not to feel,
the body that you long to devour.
Above Times Square, a naked J. Lo gazes down
at me, advertising her skincare line,
sewer steam rising against her golden thighs,
her body seems to ooze onto these swollen streets.
She insists that I too, can (should) GLO.
What JLo’s love life has taught me over the years
is that if you are in a position to start over,
why wouldn’t you?
I’ve always silently cheered for her
when she left one man for another,
shook my head when she went back to Ben.
I long for the women in movies to have an exit plan,
wish they could sense danger the way I always do.
When I read that Olivia Newton-John has died,
I imagine Frenchie comforting the mourners
and Rizzo, stoic, in dark sunglasses,
ahead of me in line at Sandy’s wake.
I want to ask her if she kicked Kinickie
to the curb after that stupid carnival,
why she didn’t prevent Frenchie from giving
Sandy that makeover, a transformation I
never found believable.
Why they let her disappear into the clouds
in that pink convertible with no way
to change her mind, nowhere to land.
I still know all of the lyrics to Hopelessly Devoted.
I sang them in the fourth-grade talent show
and the translucent moon we hung from the ceiling
floated down onto the stage like a white flag.
I didn’t reach up to stop it, just tried not to watch it fall.
Sometimes I like to see how long I can
go without touching a man,
just to show him it’s possible.
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Joan Kwon Glass is the Korean American author of Night Swim (2022), winner of the Diode Editions Book Contest, and three chapbooks. She serves as Editor-in-Chief for Harbor Review, as a Brooklyn Poets Mentor, and as Poet Laureate of Milford, CT. Joan teaches on the faculty of Hudson Valley Writers Center and her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Prairie Schooner, Asian American Writer’s Workshop (The Margins), RHINO, Dialogist, and elsewhere.
by Jillian Barnet
In morning’s cold light, the house shudders—
a truck climbs the hill, shifting gears
as you do. You and not
you, standing in the window.
Our bedroom: a train through a tunnel, dark
and light taking and returning faces.
In the glass you are a boy, a visit
to the asylum where your mother does not recognize you
and chambers of your heart choke off kindness.
Out of the house’s shadow
cows pass, their black lips re-remembering
summer’s grass and crickets. Your mother
walks weightless in that field,
her girl’s palm stroking the tall grass,
stroking your head. Childhood drifts,
a gauzy moon over the barn.
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Having received her MFA in poetry from Vermont College, Jillian Barnet was first a poet and now also writes creative nonfiction. She has taught writing and literature at Pennsylvania State University and Chatham College. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in a variety of anthologies and literary journals such as New Letters, North American Review, Nimrod, and Image. Her chapbook, Falling Bodies, is available from Finishing Line Press.
by Susie Meserve
by Summar West
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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(for Anya and Anne)
When you’re on the run
because nobody’s shown
in a handful of Sundays
and churches come and gone,
you sweat and listen with
earbuds blooming the whole
orchestra, waiting for the
salvation of what feels
like the godforsaken piano.
But wait, isn’t this
a piano concerto you’ve put
on for just this occasion?
Your feet meet pavement
and push off from one thought
to the next anonymous wave
and deeper into knowing
that August is dying and
all you smell is the sea
and all you taste are tears.
You remember that now
another poet-friend, sick too
long, has died too soon and
will not write again about a God
whose many names she called.
And you remember still more:
the pastor-friend whose grief
will go beyond every instrument,
every song for her son who
a year now is gone.
O Brahms or Bono,
Nina or Aretha,
give us some sound
from the pain suffered
down to the finest point,
where then we are asked,
who are you.
I run and remember
that autumn will arrive
and October will remind me
of when my grandmother died,
of all her lost words and letters,
and how inside my house
back then I played on repeat
an acoustic version of Losing My Religion,
or maybe I was listening for
the trumpet’s blaring,
Love Rescue Me.
This season, I’ll go out to run
that memory down and see another
maple flame out to ash, another
bag of leaves taken to the road,
and all the recyclables headed
for Redemption. Even then,
especially then, may I
remember, remember,
what she wrote to me
on a scrap of paper before
she died: being born again is
likened to the working of the wind.
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Summar West was born and raised in east Tennessee and currently resides in Mystic, Connecticut with her family. Her poems have appeared in a variety of places, including Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian Journal, Construction, Prairie Schooner, The Indianapolis Review, New South, Still, and Tar River Poetry.
by Sharon Tracey
—Topanga: where the mountain meets the sea
The Tongva
Coyote’s call cuts the wind
and wakes me, the summer moon full,
the canyon rimmed midnight blue
as if all water and light,
my dream following the path
of the day’s news—
the thin white
beluga whale
who swam a southern path
from arctic waters
and found himself in France
along the Seine.
They tried to feed him dead
herring and live trout.
They hoped to save him
as they hoisted high
with heavy nets his body,
more sardine-like than cetacean,
so emaciated. There then
was a shape-shifting
above my bed—
a whale’s glow in the echo
of coyote. The beluga’s
final thoughts unknown,
as he was spooned
from the silver river—
too fresh, too warm.
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Sharon Tracey is the author of three poetry collections: Land Marks (forthcoming, Shanti Arts 2022), Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists (Shanti Arts) and What I Remember Most is Everything (All Caps Publishing). Her poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Lily Poetry Review, Terrain.org, The Banyan Review, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in western Massachusetts. See sharontracey.com.
by Maja Lukic
The apartment is blue, filled with an absence
posing as air. Something like ice pelts the windows.
Rupture of morning: thunder rolling in like
tanks surrounding a city, and the sky throwing
down rocks as the day grays into itself, into
whatever version of itself it wants to be. There,
already I’ve mistaken storm for story, already
I’ve assumed that something that lives in time
follows its own syntax. How badly I want evolution.
I am alone. The dog curls into a sweetness.
I have been here before, I have never been here
before like this—sure and boundless and close
to happy. It is May, and for days, I’ve been thinking
of someone else, the green storms of his eyes.
A few glazed lights blur yellow through the rain.
It is May, and I know I will never return to you.
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Maja Lukic is a Poetry MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Narrative, A Public Space, The Adroit Journal, Colorado Review, and Sixth Finch, among other journals, and "The Slowdown" podcast. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
by Caitlin Grace McDonnell