by Rachel Neve-Midbar
Crooked teeth, chipmunk cheeks, all ears—your mind
by Taylor Altman
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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Past Skokie lawns flat as cemeteries
and airport buildings passing the sherbet colors of evening
down Harms Road, past the College Prep Academy, a group of boys
hacks through June’s first greenery
dreaming of the city on the other side, Lake Michigan’s
icy cut, mafiosos trailing blue Fibonacci spirals of smoke
from speakeasies and casinos. They don’t know
that other city, the ghost city beneath the lake, zoned
within its loneliness like a boy on the last day
of his childhood, turning inward to a shore unknown
to his father and brothers, the sheer blue panels
of a Calder mobile. The lake is full of stories, voices
and stories, boys stripped naked to the waist
and flayed by poison ivy, boys becoming
trees, becoming air, the circus of clouds moving silently
across the Plains suffused with light
from a distant star and floating back to earth, becoming the men
who work the great belching factories of Detroit
and Kenosha, expressions forged in steel, who press the levers
and pistons resounding in the vast cathedral
of work, holiest of names unspoken, the evening clouds
piling one atop the other, concatenating
like stories, twisting, funneling, each more intricate
than the last, bone-delicate and pale, sifted from the throats
of boys who float chained to one another
and the shore, a line of empty boats rocking end to end
in the fathomless kingdom of night.
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Taylor Altman is an attorney and writer based in Las Vegas, NV. She holds a BA from Stanford University, an MFA from Boston University, and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
by Brett Warren
I wear socks in my mom’s favorite color, pray to her
a little as I’m led to the vestibule by a woman
who explains how the gown ties in front,
which I already know. But I don’t interrupt.
It’s bad luck to keep a woman from doing her job.
And maybe her words are a ritual blessing.
I thank her and enter the changing room,
trade everything I have for a thin cotton gown,
emerge with my clothes balled up under my arm.
I search the bank of lockers for a lucky number,
but all my usuals are taken. Then I see it: 22.
The year and the day I’m standing in, the minute
the clock-hand just landed on. The lanyard
dangling from locker 22 is purple, the exact purple
of the winter coat my mom always wore
before she began to disappear. I stuff everything
inside, close and lock the skinny door, slip
the purple coil around my wrist. Luck turns the key
into a protection charm, the interior waiting room
into a temple of filtered light. We enter, one at a time,
to sit together in silence. In our identical habits,
we look more like our mothers than on most days.
We leaf through magazines or pretend to watch
the news, which someone, probably a nurse,
has muted.
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Brett Warren (she/her) is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, The Comstock Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts, in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway.
by Susana H. Case
My mother sang opera off-key
while she worked in her kitchen,
favored Pagliacci, a story
of entanglement. The dissonance
irritated me as a teenager
but became part of what I hold
close, the longing for what itches
most after it's gone, for the woman
who never got to use her passport.
Have a career, she advised. It's less
boring. I had a primeval fear
she would devour me,
like the gerbil mother I once observed
in a tank who meticulously
negated all her babies.
Have your own money.
Don't depend on any man.
The colonized body has two choices,
and either way, La commedia è finita!
Lie down with the devil.
Don't lie down.
There will be nothing when you run
out of figs. You will be
like the fireflies, practically gone.
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Susana H. Case is the award-winning author of eight books of poetry, most recently, The Damage Done (Broadstone Books, 2022). She is co-editor with Margo Taft Stever of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk & Cake Press, 2022). Case worked several decades as a university professor/program coordinator in New York City. She is a co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. If This Isn't Love is forthcoming from Broadstone Books in 2024.
by Jo Brachman
Nothing but a blur of brevity. She saw it first.
He tried to capture it—lens-click—still a cloud
of nothing. They’d been sitting on the wall outside
the duomo at early dusk, talking about spending
their last stage of life in a foreign country. To die
here, where the light of the old masters’ brushes
washed the stucco, the cobblestones, their faces.
The small flies arrived. Each frenzied gnat created
the larger, slower shape of a moon in-the-making.
The males moved as swarms do—with one mind
to attract females who would only join
the churning mass to mate. The mundane
ghost-bodies spun, wings backlit by the sun’s
last bone-colors of the ancient.
The gnats would live for hours, at the most
a few days, coded to cheat death by breeding.
The couple vowed to be reborn for a chance
of another lifetime together in this fortress town
where long ago, Etruscans divined the future
by gazing into a goat’s liver. The two watched
in silence. Rising above the duomo piazza,
the flies swelled into a thousand prayers.
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Jo Brachman holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Moon City Review, Terminus Magazine, Poet Lore, Birmingham Review, Comstock Review, San Pedro River Review, Best New Poets, Tar River, and others. A 2022 Fulbright Scholar, she recently finished a research grant in the Special Collections Archives of Lund University in Lund, Sweden.
by Sherry Stuart Berman
for S.
All summer, on the news,
citrus-colored skies. Tiny suns
like Red Hots I could pop
in my mouth. Beautiful dust.
Deluge. My patient’s father texts me:
She’s intubated after using drugs
again, and he’ll send me a check.
How often had she said disease and
wish, smoothed her bangs
with the ringed fingers
of both hands. When I call him,
I’m skimming—as in, hard to know
or meant to find. I’m not a star,
right now, boiling an egg
is beyond me. A fork falls
and for hours I don’t notice
how blood frames my toenail.
Some days
the Amazon gods
leave poetry
on my doorstep. Hulu
and its mock heaven.
I tunnel back
to her chair, finally
stop drinking.
She won’t make it this time.
I’m a mother and scared
to feed my son. I talk to myself
in every room. How else
to admit failure?
Trauma-bodies; pain-
bodies: I pick their hearts
out one by one, lose
my place by the end
of a session.
Intimacy that’s not.
I save a dead woman’s text.
My son needs a feast and I
don’t. I don’t.
Maybe ghosts aren’t real
but I heard a sigh in that room,
turned and said, what?
I have this child and I had this love
and I could not see her through.
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Sherry Stuart Berman’s poems have appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Guesthouse, 2 Horatio, The Night Heron Barks, Atticus Review, Rise Up Review, Writers Resist, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies, Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai and Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books. Originally from South Florida, she is a psychotherapist in private practice and lives in Staten Island, NY, with her husband and son.
by Leah Mueller
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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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