Laundry

SWWIM Every Day
by Tamara J. Madison

by Tamara J. Madison

for all the misbehaved women who have yet to make history…
 (Response to poet Amanda Johnston’s “Even Now”)


How you just air all our dirty
laundry like that, sis?
The granny panties with the bleached moon stains,
the big gurl draw’s with frayed elastic bands,
even the silky G-strings and
crotchless leopard print with lace
beneath blushing sun ablaze,
the worn titty holders,
the weakened bosom brace its
thinning cups translucent—
all our frolicking exposed
along one long hussy line.

How you just put all our business
on the street for passersby to preen? But

then again, hussy is as hussy does:
brazen, grinning, dangling
her charms on a velvet rope
waiting to tie him up,
wash him clean with her sins
again.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tamara J. Madison is a writer/poet, editor, and instructor motivated and inspired by her ancestry and relations. Her work is published in various journals and anthologies. She has also shared her poetry on the TEDx platform. She is producer of "BREAKDOWN: The Poet & The Poems," a YouTube conversation series. Her recent poetry collection, Threed, This Road Not Damascus, is published by Trio House Press.

Back at the Airbnb

SWWIM Every Day
by Merrill Oliver Douglas

by Merrill Oliver Douglas

When they realize I haven’t come to this table to sit quietly
with takeout spare ribs, that I have questions and want to chat
while their mother cooks pasta in the kitchen—this mother
who has moved them to one big room just until the divorce
goes through—then the girls warm up, like popcorn
in the microwave, giggling, elbowing each other, waving
crayoned pages, bringing me riddles and jump rope rhymes
from school like armloads of zinnias, Leora snatching off
Athena’s hat to force a chase around the table. Oh sisters,
where did this yearning come from? It knocks me nose over
knees like the voice of that young man staffing the counter at
Au Bon Pain, who, when I walked in, called, Hey baby girl!
a greeting so absurd my face grew hot and I tripped
on the toe of my sneaker. Girls, right now, in this suburb
where no person claims me, you are my best friends. Set
aside my ignorance of private jokes that make you laugh
so hard you rush to the kitchen to spit out your Coke;
forget that I don’t know whether your hearts slam shut
or glow like sun-tipped asters when your dad phones.
What makes me think you’ll remember me at all?
For years now, my life has been picked clean of children,
raked, mowed, sprayed for bees. Not a thing I can do.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Merrill Oliver Douglas is the author of the poetry chapbook, Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Little Patuxent Review, and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York, where she works as a freelance business writer, goes kayaking when she can, and takes Yiddish classes on Zoom.

Don'ts for Girls

SWWIM Every Day
by Suzanne Langlois

by Suzanne Langlois

It’s mostly don’ts, really.
Even the dos are thinly veiled don’ts.
Do cross your legs at the ankles and no higher.
Do place your purse between your leg and that
of the boy sitting next to you on the couch.
Do cover your mouth when you laugh at his jokes.
Do laugh at his jokes, even if they are not funny,
even if they are at your expense.
If they are at your expense and not funny,
do realize that they are not jokes, but directions.
A few weeks before graduation, the president
of my college announced that all gender-based
courses would be discontinued at the start
of the next academic year.
Girls in Education, gone.
Women poets before 1900, gone.
Gender and Politics, gone.
He claimed gender was no longer relevant.
This was nineteen years before Roe was overturned.
A concurrent email read,
Women, do wear flats with your graduation robe.
The ground will be uneven.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Suzanne Langlois’s chapbook, Bright Glint Gone, won the 2019 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance chapbook award. Her poems have appeared most recently in Best New Poets, Rust + Moth, Menacing Hedge, Scoundrel Time, and Leon Literary Review. She holds a MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches high school English in Falmouth, Maine.

this country will require you to be magical then attempt to burn you for being a witch

SWWIM Every Day
by Angelique Zobitz

by Angelique Zobitz


It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Girl-child, power-in-waiting, Revolution,
this world will try to cleave you
in half, reach inside—
lay waste, leave you
a bloody mess of seed,
pulp, carved out meat—
pick your bones
attempt to harness your sweet
for a world full
of eager carrion birds.

Transfigurate:
flower, fruit, fire—
unfurl an inferno
curling coils down
your devil back.
Scorch them with your flame
tongue. Remind them you
predate evangelism;
leave them ashes,
burn them down—
teach them our bodies
are best left alone.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Angelique Zobitz (she/her/hers) is the author of the chapbooks Burn Down Your House (Milk & Cake Press) and Love Letters to The Revolution (American Poetry Journal). Her first book, Seraphim, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in April 2024. She is a 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and Philip Levine Prize finalist, multi-nominated for the Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Sugar House Review, Yemasse, Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, The Adirondack Review, ANMLY, and many others. She can be found at www.angeliquezobitz.com and on Twitter and Instagram: @angeliquezobitz.

Abecedarian for the Walking Woman

SWWIM Every Day

by Simone Muench and Jackie K. White


Alleys: never. Boulevard: maybe. But only in broad daylight.
Corners: not without a label. Dead end to end up dead.
Entrance: not without a fee. Fear? Always. on route to a gangplank.
Hill: where they found Heather's body. Into the garden: a flaming

sword swung against Eve. Near Joshua Tree: more bodies
and next to a knoll: a doll. Livid? Also always. when loathed
as marionettes in the morning; nowhere girls by night.
Overlook: not without witnesses. Passageway, ripe

with striations where ponytail or limbs were left, evidence
of trying a short-cut. Queue: movie, concert, or liquor
store, not without looking over your shoulder. Railway
tracks: stitches will be needed. And no forest trails

or tunnels for you. Underground: not without a few
hey babys. And whether by valley or viaduct, you’ll need
wings to bypass the xylophonic yelp from your own
throat. Wending: still not allowed. Yonder: always zip-tied.

______________________________________________________________________

Simone Muench is a recipient of an NEA fellowship and author of several books, including Lampblack & Ash (Sarabande; winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize) and Wolf Centos (Sarabande). She’s an editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and serves as a poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, advisor for Jet Fuel Review, poetry editor for JackLeg Press, and founder of the HB Sunday Reading Series.

Jackie K. White is the author of three previous chapbooks and the co-author, with Simone Muench, of Hex & Howl (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Professor Emerita at Lewis University, her poems, translations, and collaborative poems have appeared in such journals as The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Hypertext, Pleiades, and Shenandoah.

untitled (i imagine)

SWWIM Every Day
by Ditta Baron Hoeber

by Ditta Baron Hoeber

I imagine

That there’s no one
For whom I’ll break my hands

But it’s not true.
I would break my hands for you.

& I imagine that you ask.

______________________________________________________________________

Ditta Baron Hoeber is an artist as well as a poet. Her poems have been published in a number of magazines including Noon, Gargoyle, The American Journal of Poetry, Juxtaprose, Pank, Burningword Literary Review, The American Poetry Review, and Contemporary American Voices. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her first book, Without You: A Poem And A Preface, is forthcoming in 2023.

the convert discovers joy

SWWIM Every Day
by Doritt Carroll

by Doritt Carroll


the church had a slogan for it: JOY, meaning
that one tried to please Jesus first, then Others,
and only if there was time left over Yourself

later, after i had given up, i called the mothers’
group that met in the rectory basement
the Martyrdom Olympics if i mentioned

i’d been sick every other mother had been sicker
and while deathly ill also had driven one hundred
fifty miles for sports drop-off and iced three

classrooms’ worth of cupcakes on the way
when they asked how many children i had
their response always was the same—“only

two?” not just because it suggested I was using
birth control but also because it meant i wasn’t
suffering enough one of the expressions everyone

repeated was “offer it up” meaning give your suffering
to God and one time i made the room fall silent when
i blurted out “but why would He want it?”

______________________________________________________________________

Doritt Carroll is a native of Washington, DC. Doritt is the winner of Harbor Review’s 2020 Laura Lee Washburn prize for her chapbook, A Meditation on Purgatory. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Main Street Rag and RHINO, among others. Her collection, GLTTL STP, was published by Brickhouse Books. Her chapbook, Sorry You Are Not An Instant Winner, was published by Kattywompus (2017). She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

My Name

SWWIM Every Day
by Nivi Engineer

by Nivi Engineer



It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

______________________________________________________________________

He approaches with pen and paper,
asks for my name and number.
I indulge him
his daily ritual;
I’m a stranger, after all
and he, gracious host,
offers donuts I refuse.
So to this small request, how can I say no?
He writes my name
then—digit by digit—jots it down,
a number he hasn’t dialed in months,
a quest for connection,
a map to a road he’ll never drive.
But tomorrow, I know,
he may discover the paper in the pocket
of the pants he’s reluctant to change.
And if I’m here when he does it,
he’ll at least marvel at the coincidence.
But this time,
he asks—
unlike before—
“Whose child are you?”
I reply, watching his face.
“Yours.”
And the joyous smile, the marvel,
is enough.

______________________________________________________________________

Nivi Engineer earned degrees in English (BA from Case Western Reserve University), Computer Science (MS from Washington University in St. Louis), and Fiction (MFA from Spalding University), and is actively pursuing CAPM certification while slowly learning Korean. She is the author of Can We Throw the Colors Yet?, a children’s book about Holi, and The Indian Girl’s Definitive Guide to Staying Single, Jaathi, and numerous short stories. She appeared in two episodes of the “Once Upon a Disney” podcast and recently presented a talk about “The Joy of Failure” at a Women in Computing conference. 

Reflections on Sex Lessons

SWWIM Every Day
by Karen Elizabeth Sharpe

by Karen Elizabeth Sharpe


I aimed to be
loved, or at least necessary.
I didn’t know
I could say no.
Pointed at my body:
This old thing? Just slipped it on.
Later, I said no
but my voice was only inside.
I had studied at the school
of the encrypted. Father’s
teasing, nameless women,
Penthouses, Playboys
under the beds, crumpled.
Mother’s slim magazine lessons
Dictating: stay skinny
keep your man happy
dinner in 30 minutes or less.

Dinner in 30 minutes. Or less
keeping your man happy.
Dictating: stay skinny
mothers. Slim magazine lessons
under the beds. Crumpled
Penthouses, Playboys
teasing. Nameless women
of the encrypted fathers.
I had studied at the school
but my voice was only inside.
Later, I said no.
This old thing. Just slipped it on,
pointed at my body.
I could say no.
I didn’t know.
Loved, or at least necessary
I aimed to be.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review. Her chapbook, Prayer Can Be Anything, is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press (2023). Her poems have or will soon appear in Split Rock Review, Ocean State Review, West Trade Review, Mom Egg Review, and Catalyst, among others.

Gifting My Mother Tabu Dusting Powder

SWWIM Every Day
by Luci Huhn

by Luci Huhn


Forgive my short walk to the corner store.
Late November, her birthday, forgive me

the same gift each year. Top notes of orange
and bergamot, base notes of musk and cedar—

forgive my intoxication.
Forgive the mystery its name held to a child,

its box round and dark as chocolate cake.
And the talc’s feathery puff—forgive the weightless

pink. Forgive the lake and ocean floors
where it was dug—translucent soapstone

coupled with asbestos ore. Forgive the
crystals, the cleavage—mica, silicate, the tiny

hexagons—forgive the pearly luster
that killed the men who breathed and boxed it.

Forgive the women who pressed their breasts
and hips and more against it. My mother—

soaking in her evening bath—was saved,
the whirl of children sent to town

for hamburgers. We could sit at the drugstore
counter, order again and again if we were still

hungry. Who could predict the evening’s charge—
positive or negative? Who could know

if the talc’s tiny atoms would stir or settle
her mood? Forgive the sand and ore that edged

her body every day. Forgive what washed
down the drain, silvered the street to the river,

rushed over the dam—forgive the roar of inky
water. Forgive what made it to the next town,

and the next, what made it tonight, to the great
lake where I live—white with winter’s dusting.

______________________________________________________________________

Luci Huhn is a poet writing in Southwest Michigan. Most recently her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, West Branch, Leon Literary Review, Rattle, and Persimmon Tree. She was nominated by West Branch in 2022 for a Pushcart Prize, and by Leon Literary Review in 2021 for a Best of the Net Award.

Smolder

SWWIM Every Day
by Sara Potocsny

by Sara Potocsny


You send the baby to school that same morning
and it feels right: the wind
breaking around the car.
Proof you are still something
air will yield to.

“When you stop moving the darkness comes,”
someone you loved used to say. And even if you don’t
believe it, you stay in motion just to drown it out.

You hold your son’s hand as he climbs the schoolhouse steps
wearing the neighbor’s clothes, the building still there,
his teachers well slept, like the inside of a barn
first thing in the morning, their eyes trained
on you, measuring by sight the odds you don’t
break in the doorway. Succumb to whatever comes
after shock, there at their feet.

And then you drive yourself not home because it’s gone
but to a little patch of daylight beneath a small tree
where the world is quiet. And as you sit beneath its limbs
you notice the ringing in your ears has dimmed
to something more like chimes, the friction between silks
or fast water through a tin pipe.

And though you still smell like the ribbons of smoke
that have all but killed you,
you amount again and again
to more than you have all your life.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sara Potocsny is a writer in Syracuse, NY, where she lives with her son, Sol. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She has one chapbook called The Circle Room, published by Lover Books. She has work in or forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review, Juked, Hobart, Radar, HAD, The Racket, Rejection Letters, and others. You can find her on Twitter at @sarapotocsny and IG at @spotocsny.

Consider

SWWIM Every Day
by Linda Laderman

by Linda Laderman


the old women, the crones, the crossed,

the witches, the wise, the weary, the widows who wear

grief like a full-length mink stored in the cool dark.

Consider their wounds, the warnings, the fractures,

their cautious steps, the invisible, the inevitable.

Consider their bobbing chins, creased eyelids, lined lips,

fixed smiles, misheard words, memories misplaced

like a sequined black dress stowed in a back hall closet.

Consider their struggle to recall anniversaries, birthdays,

the youngest, the oldest, the miscarriages, the chemo.

Consider their longing, the loneliness, the lost lovers,

the moves, the mirrors, everywhere the mirrors, mocking,

reflecting, rewinding—days consumed with refills, missed

appointments, forgotten plans, lists of what to take when.

Consider their red walkers, the caretakers, the matinees,

the confiscated keys, the condescending conversations—

Now picture fresh squeezed orange juice in a plastic cup,

a straw pushed through the hole on top, and understand

the only way to drink is for a stranger to bring the straw

to your mouth. As the cold liquid trickles down your throat,

consider the time when squeezing an orange was as simple

as turning off the light before you turned over to sleep.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Linda Laderman is a Detroit writer and poet. Her work has appeared in The Willawaw Journal, Third Wednesday, The Write Launch, The Jewish Literary Journal, and The Scapegoat Review, among others. Two poems are forthcoming this May in The Writers Foundry Review. She belongs to the Poetry Craft Collective, a cohort of poets who review and encourage each other's work. Until recently, she was a docent at The Holocaust Center near Detroit.

Not Every Body Is This Hard to Carry

SWWIM Every Day
by Katherine Riegel

by Katherine Riegel


Having a body is like dragging around
a huge purse, one of those satchel-sized leather
behemoths that holds everything you could possibly

need: wallet, change purse, sunglasses, pen, lip balm,
clear stream to sit beside, existential crisis, your dead
relatives’ voices, doggie poop bags. It’s all

in there but you have to root around
for your keys, and while you’re pawing through
you find other things you forgot you were carrying:

envelope with a friend’s address on it, white-flecked rock
you picked up because it was shaped like a heart.
The thing is fucking heavy, and for some of us

it just gets heavier, and then we discover
we can’t run with it, the corners
are soggy with pain, old to-do lists spill

from the top. The body begins to tear,
duct tape doesn’t help, it’s a struggle to keep
everything where it’s supposed to be. Suddenly

your crackling knees insist I am you and your mind
says Fuck off but then you remember you’re actually
inside the ginormous purse and oh-my-god there’s

the bike you rode at fourteen, hot wind in your face,
the turquoise ring you can no longer wear on your swollen fingers,
and at the very bottom a weedy path

you know you have to walk—you want
to walk—if you can just get it together, chivvy yourself
out of your chair, not always hopeful but alive, still alive.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Katherine Riegel is the author of Love Songs from the End of the World, the chapbook Letters to Colin Firth, and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Brevity, The Gettysburg Review, The Offing, One, Poets.org, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and managing editor of Sweet Lit, and teaches independent online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction. Find her at katherineriegel.com.

Last Bite

SWWIM Every Day
by Marie McGrath

by Marie McGrath


I love to offer you the last bite;
this is new for me. I eat, and I mean
Eat! Before any meal is over
I’m dreaming of the next one.
I always eat most and fastest and I want
a bite of yours too. Folks say stay hungry
and don’t mean it literally but I mean it
literally because when you’ve counted
almonds and grams and know
how many calories live in one lick of a postage stamp
gluttony is a gift. I’m not embarrassed
to overdo it, or at least less so
than I was before. Let everyone know:
even when I’m full, I'm starving. Y’all get it.
I want to fill my fucking plate! I want it piled high
with Everything. Candied and crusted,
salty, briny as the seas I’ve tasted (and those
I haven’t), bright as fluorescence, tangy
enough to pucker my lips as if to kiss
the air itself. Give me umami, give me white-hot
then creamy. Glossy and starchy and stretchy,
crunchy pillowy saucy yes I want to be sick
with want and then fulfillment, haunted by mouth
-feels I’ve yet to imagine. I want to eat and eat
and eat with you until I'm consumed.
Lay me out, a main on the table.
All the sides and soups, too. Nose to tail,
not just my prize cuts—breast, tender
loin, rump—the gamey stuff, the hard bits,
simmered long and soft and succulent, pearly fat
rendered for a fry-up, all the little joints salted and cracked
open to the marrow, and then, at the end,
when all that’s left of me is one gleaming morsel,
I will raise my fork to your lips and, with any luck,
you will open your delicious mouth
and take it.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Marie McGrath (she/her) is a poet from Miami. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Florida. Her poems have appeared in Subtropics, Poet Lore, Scrivener Creative Review, and others. When not writing, she serves as the Development Director for O, Miami and co-hosts the podcast "Spare Time." She lives in Washington, D.C with her girlfriend and their two baby cats. For more from Marie, visit www.mariekmcgrath.com.

Eveningside

SWWIM Every Day
by Marion Brown

by Marion Brown


Night blots out the Olympic
Range. My daughter and I
make do with what might be

Cassiopeia. I’ve crossed an ice-
locked continent to lean my leg
on hers, to gaze into nightfall 

before I sleep. She cradles
a laptop. A Libra, she weighs
what she reads: fetal cells

get left behind. Not a foreign
tourist, a fetus hangs on.
The alien never goes home.

She and I both harbor some
exotic code.  Looking out,
primed for a far-off message,

my daughter does not name
the heartbeat that stopped.
I know a few specifics

but not the one to wean her
from love. (Press a torn
aloe leaf against the burn.) 

I, too, squint and peer,
taking in stars far away
or long gone out. In my

solar system, daughter cells
must be orbiting moons
too close for me to see.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Yonkers resident, Marion Brown holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Finishing Line Press published her chapbooks Tasted and The Morning After Summer. Her poem “In the Dock, Fagin Reflects” won the Portico Poetry Competition. Other poems have appeared in Guesthouse, the Women’s Review of Books, Kestrel, The Night Heron Barks, and DIAGRAM. She serves on the Advisory Committee of Slapering Hol Press and Graywolf’s National Council.

The Whale

SWWIM Every Day
by Rebecca Hart Olander

by Rebecca Hart Olander

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mine died when I hit middle age, he still young
at sixty-eight. I’ll never say we’re through.

He is that creature under the cold Atlantic blanket,
migratory mammal, singing a complex song,

large heart beating in time with mine, wide cetacean
smile, throat pleats, fluke, and fin. All that potential

lamplight and winter warmth stored in his immortal bulk.
No harvested baleen, no corset bone. He’ll never stop

his route, though sometimes he needs to breach,
and once I dreamed he beached. I tried to drag him back

to the surf, where the salt could lick his wounds
and he could open one eye to the sun.

But that was a nightmare. The truth is in the Gulf
Stream, dark shadow spouting, swimming with seals.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry has appeared recently in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Jet Fuel Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere, and her collaborative visual and written work has been published in multiple venues online and in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her books include a chapbook, Dressing the Wounds (dancing girl press, 2019), and her debut full-length collection, Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021). She teaches writing at Westfield State University and Amherst College and works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University. She is the editor/director of Perugia Press. Find her online at rebeccahartolander.com or @rholanderpoet.

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