by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
by Jackie Craven
by Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky
by Lane Falcon
Bridges keep collapsing
in his body.
What if the graft dissolves
like last time?
Like the surgery didn’t
happen?
Then weeks of epinephrine,
choking so bad
he shot up in his crib
to grab me,
and panic wicked him away
shit after shit, vomit
after vomit. Every day,
death peered closer,
until I let go, let them
replace the trach.
This time, they’ll cut
the graft wider,
place it higher, so when
I uncurl the canula
from the scar-twined
hole in his neck,
and, in his pupils,
I see a patch of trust
blooming through fear—
he will breathe.
It will hold.
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Lane Falcon is a poet who lives in Alexandria, VA with her two kids and dog. Her manuscript, Deep Blue Odds, was selected as a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize, and semi-finalist for the 2022 Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize and the Inaugural Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Prize.
by Grae Gardiner
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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by Paula J. Lambert
Though pelts had long been traded across Asia, wings and feet removed, Europeans first encountering Birds-of-Paradise believed the birds must have simply floated on air until, like exhausted angels, they fell to earth.
You did not fall, dear heart. We reached for you and,
so surprised our human hands made contact,
pulled you down to what could only be your hell.
Bless us, oh beautiful bird, wingless, footless,
still carrying the scent of cinnamon, cloves, and greed,
for we have surely sinned, so many times
and in so many gruesome ways. We failed to see you,
holy relic, as witness to our own hubris, our inability
to understand that reaching was its own gift.
Oh, beautiful bird, we see you now and bow to you,
ask you to believe we of featherless form can do better,
can be better—truly and without irony—
than what our fathers taught us. We reach now only
for your forgiveness, understanding our penance at last
and firmly resolving, with the help of your grace,
to amend our lives and to see your lovely, still-living
progeny for what they are: testament to what we might
be instead of what we might own.
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Paula J. Lambert has published several collections of poetry, including The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing (FutureCycle 2022) and How to See the World (Bottom Dog 2020). Awarded PEN America's L'Engle-Rahman Prize for Mentorship, Lambert's poetry and prose has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, Greater Columbus Arts Council, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.
by Yamini Pathak
A chat on a moonlit terrace where one person is more in love than the other. Both laugh, each sounds different.
Boatman struggling in the biceps of a river.
Some memories are redder than others. I watched my brother beat another boy on the playground because he called our father a bastard. Saw the boy’s body crumple like a paper flower, his nose spurt crimson blooms. Nobody knew what a bastard was.
Labor pains.
The scent of street food wafting up from the vendor’s cart as he puts together a paper cone of puffed rice, slivers of onion, cucumber, tomato and hot green chilies, lemon juice and mustard oil. The tide of saliva that rises in the mouth. This is not a red memory. It’s definitely green. Lime green. Raw mango green.
Ribbons in shiny black hair. Swinging braids.
A man who carried newspapers, magazines, bestsellers, and comic books wrapped in a white sheet. A door-to-door visiting library. He smelled of paper and ink. The rush of blood to my face when I opened the door.
Train journeys. Hot wind. Paddy fields, egret, and buffalo. Towns with names like Itarsi and Manmad Junction where you will never get off but whose names you murmur in time with the rhythm of the rails. Scalding hot chai numbs your tongue. Coal dust from the steam engine blows back in the wind. Take care it doesn’t get in your eyes. Some of it is still on fire.
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Yamini Pathak was born in India. She is the author of chapbooks, Atlas of Lost Places (Milk and Cake Press, 2020) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Vida Review, About Place Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, and elsewhere. A Dodge Foundation Poet in Schools, she serves as poetry editor for Inch micro-chapbooks (Bull City Press). Yamini has received her MFA in poetry from Antioch University, LA.
by Melissa McEver Huckabay
After Luisa Muradyan
This isn’t a motivational poem.
I’m just a woman doing dishes on a Tuesday.
I swirl the soap like Andromeda and count
the stars on the plate, imagining they’re suds.
The sky turns golden in the evening
and I remember nebulas I never saw,
their gleaming clouds a birthplace,
my daughter never born. Pencils
are rocket-shaped and I sort them
by color—yellow, fuchsia, turquoise,
Io, Europa, Ganymede. Wipe the rings
off the table. I can’t listen
to Holst and his Planets anymore,
the horns announcing Jupiter or Neptune.
Why does he leave one out, the only one I know well—
my meteor feet landing here and staying
since the day I was born?
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Melissa McEver Huckabay is an MFA candidate in poetry at Texas State University. Her work has appeared in Poetry South, Defunkt, Porter House Review, and elsewhere, and her short fiction has won the Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize from Spider Road Press. She lives in Central Texas with her husband, son and two affectionate cats.
by Sara Ries Dziekonski
Look at me with those crooked bangs and baggy shorts
at the end of the dock of my grandparents’ cottage.
My father pushes a squirming worm through a hook—
Does it hurt? I ask. Grandpa ignites a fat cigar.
At the end of the dock of my grandparents’ cottage,
Grandpa coughs up thunder. I turn from the worm.
Does it hurt? I ask. Still no answer. Grandpa puffs his cigar;
he is always smoking a cigar, and yes, it does.
Grandpa’s cough is thunder. I turn from the smoke-worm.
His lips press a cigar; my lips stick from Lip Smacker.
He always smokes a soggy cigar and yes,
it hurts to be a worm dangling from a hook.
His lips cradle the cigar; I lick my strawberry lips.
Grandpa’s pockets bulge from butterscotches and matches.
It hurts to be the worm pierced by the hook;
it hurts to be handed more candy pieces than words.
Grandpa has bumpy pockets from butterscotches and matches.
My father, in a minnow shirt, casts the line.
It hurts to be handed more candy than words,
but at least I am not the worm.
My father, in a minnow shirt, casts the line,
cracks open a Bud Light.
At least we’re not drowning like the worm.
I suppose we should be thankful for that.
He drowns a slippery beer.
The men talk about the good old days.
I suppose we should be thankful for today.
Grandpa hands me a butterscotch.
The men talk about the good ol’ days.
The fishing pole becomes a curve, bodies tense.
Grandpa casts me a butterscotch,
my belly sour from sweets and hooks in fish.
Fishing pole becomes a bow, bodies tense.
My father unhooks the fish,
my belly a tangle of fishing line—
Father gives the water back the fish, the fish back the water.
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Sara Ries Dziekonski holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her first book, Come In, We're Open, won the 2009 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her chapbooks include Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor (Finishing Line Press 2018) and Marrying Maracuyá (Main Street Rag 2021), which won the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in Slipstream, LABOR, and 2River VIew, among others. She is the co-founder of Poetry Midwives Editing Services.
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