by Kami Westhoff
I did not want to write this poem. I’m sick of the street
by Gaian Rena Bird
We are the stuff of burnt-out stars
Salt song oceans
Million-year-old mud
Our bones tell us secrets
We do not know this
Sunflowers we planted
in April are 10-foot giants
Russet faces smile down
On us even in the rain
We know this is so but do not know why
The backyard is bereft
Empty of you sitting in your sun dress
Your iced tea with a straw
I was with you the day
you bought the blue gingham from Goodwill
Your shoulders so thin and frail
I wanted to drag
you back into childhood
Take back wishes for easy and quick
We know this is called regret
The shopping cart with
Everything you own is in the garage
The policeman hooks his thumb
Near his gun as he says we can't
Give you your things
Tells me the cart cannot stay
On the street where they
Took you bruised and dirty
to Nisqually for 60 days or three years
We know this is called the system
The place where you are
lets you choose "transgender"
on your electronic profile
Makes you wear men's clothes
We know this is called progress
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Gaian Rena Bird is a Black Indigenous womxn, writer, poet, and artist living in University Place, WA. She is an Elder, a sojourner in liminal spaces, and a denizen of multiple margins. As an introverted human with numerous disabilities, she reveres Crip Time as her superpower. Gaian writes from a place inseparable from her motherline. The works of transgressive Black and Indigenous women are the spiritual food and drink that fuel her words.
by Sibani Sen
Under the vernacular sun
I tally cane and gold
I, raconteur of the tannic hills.
Mandarins in castled groves
Cultivate calendula blooms
Upon my back.
Red sill and coal
Suss out my thousand eyes
I lash time
Shiver in my
Slurry skin, pitched, flailed
I prepare the vestal
I bring it level to the light
Brim, flow
One immaculate, everlasting life.
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Sibani Sen teaches creative writing and South Asian history. She has a PhD in Indology from Harvard University and an MFA from Boston University. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Off the Coast, Nixes Mate Review, Rogue Agent, and Main Street Rag. She has done collaborative projects with the History Design Studio at the Harvard Hutchins Center, the Concord Museum, the Beacon Street Arts Studios in Somerville, the former Green Street Studio in Cambridge, and the pop-up New Rasa Initiative group at the Public Theater in NYC. Her current projects based on migration and feminism include forthcoming poetry and a monograph on the Indian pre-modern poet Bharatchandra.
by Kelly Vance
for Heather
Sandalwood smoke through lavender
stems and dim sunlight filtered
through elm leaves, half-lidded
blinds, and the dust motes
your house made from our leftover
flesh and fur. We were the dander-
lions, shedding ourselves
little fluff balls, mighty manes
falling stranded on the tiles.
I never minded a little dust
knowing it was just a little
us, remainders, reminders
of living so much we scattered
ourselves like blue through leaves.
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Kelly Vance is a graduate student in Eastern Kentucky University's MFA program in creative writing where she received the Emerging Writers Award for poetry in 2021. In 2019, she completed the Conscious Feminine Leadership Academy affiliated with Women Writing for (a) Change, Cincinnati, and incorporates many conscious leadership concepts into her writing, mentorship, and professional work as a psychiatrist.
by Lola Haskins
1. Turquoise
The sky loved the bay so much
he melted into her.
Beside such devotion we,
with all our pride, are less than ants.
2. Ocean Drive, Miami
The hotel fronts pretend to be cake.
Look out!
Los niños are banging their spoons on the table.
3. A Generation
The piece of paper we were given
is too small. Still, up and down
the rows we bend our heads,
and a silence falls over us as
along a street where one by one
the house lights are going out.
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Lola Haskins's new collection, Homelight, is just out from Charlotte Lit Press. The Betsy-South Beach is The hotel in “Poems Written in Pencil,” which appeared in Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare (University of Pittsburgh, 2019), also featured in The New York Times The Sunday Magazine. Past honors include the Iowa Poetry Prize, two NEAs, two Florida Book Awards, narrative poetry prizes from Southern Poetry Review and New England Review/Breadloaf Quarterly, a Florida's Eden prize for environmental writing, and the Emily Dickinson Prize from Poetry Society of America.
by Charlotte Pence
It’s too early for the new
hurricane season, yet warnings
flood my phone. New Orleans’
tug boat bellows blocks away.
Amid the paleness of morning
mimosas, the bedpost anchors.
Storm alerts confirm:
hurricane is headed our way.
But I’m already cracking
crab legs and contemplating
eleven years of marriage.
Of what no longer holds
a charge. A text interrupts:
“Your stepfather’s health is
deteriorating quickly.”
My stepfather’s neighbor
“just wants me to know.”
How it always returns to small
cubes of raw fish placed before us,
oil’s admiration for the surface
of things, daughters who slowly
stop kissing goodbye. What is
goodbye when Facebook chooses
memories to return to me?
We push on, down damp
streets, scent of urine on brick.
Sax notes rising up like my blister,
shiny as lighting—
none of which will photo.
At the street corner, an upturned
bucket sticks out its tongue
to become a drum, pounding us
to another place: past trips with other
downpours that laughed, that ducked.
Is this marriage, or is it
raining again? My mother texts
“Don’t worry, relax,” so we pose
a video, scoff at cocktails
in neon plastic penises, praise
weathered flamingo-pink shutters,
ignore what shutters do
when they’re shut, when they’re screwed,
the storm’s percussive wanting in and in.
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Charlotte Pence’s most recent book of poetry, Code, received the 2020 Book of the Year award from APS. Her first book of poems, Many Small Fires, which received an INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award from Foreword Reviews, explores her father’s chronic homelessness while simultaneously detailing the physiological changes that enabled humans to form cities, communities, and households. A graduate of Emerson College and UT Knoxville, she now directs the Stokes Center for Creative Writing.
by Kuhu Joshi
On a date with the boy I finally like
I talk about my father.
How he found my mother
at the officers’ academy, smiling
and pinning her sarees.
I tell my date, biting into ravioli, my father hunted
for the woman who would birth me
in the bowl of her lap, humming
lullabies. My father still in office.
“I really like this guy,” I texted my girlfriends
from the bathroom on WhatsApp.
And of course I didn’t tell my date
how the story unfolded. My father twisted
my arm, and more, on my sixteenth birthday.
I was laughing with a boy, unwrapping
presents. I still blew the candles,
light in the bruise of the night
and after, my mother stroked my curls
on her lap and said, “He is not a monster,”
“He is not a monster.” “I want to date him,”
“I want to date him,” my mind was flashing
as I sat across this warm and confident
man who made me laugh so hard
my kajal ran the length of my cheek. O,
I wanted, then, to love him.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Kuhu Joshi is an Indian poet based in New York City. Her work has been published in POETRY, Best New Poets, Four Way Review, Black Fork Review, Rattle, Memorious, and others. She was awarded an honorable mention for the Academy of American Poets' university prize. She currently teaches college-level creative writing and composition. Her debut poetry collection, My Body Didn't Come Before Me, is forthcoming with Speaking Tiger Books India.
by Zoë Ryder White
From inside the murmuration, I texted Jo. I am inside these birds, I wrote. I sent a seven-second video. OH!! Jo wrote back. The birds lifted in sequence from their several trees, lit again on several others a little farther down the hill. I felt the air they beat on my face and hands. I felt my heart’s indecorous thud. How many landing blackbirds, and no one missed their branch! Then they were gone. Since they were gone, I started running. I thought to text Jo later: is there a finite number that represents how many times a person might stand inside a flock? What if this is my fourth-to-last time??? But maybe the issue is less a scarcity of murmurations than a scarcity of imagination, of action plans. Running down the ridge, I thought, I need not passively accept my own projected lack of blackbird. I could just go to where the birds are and be still. But where had they gone? At bedtime tonight, my son said, a number is a number is a number and it goes on forever. Ever is a number, he said, and every number also has its word. He asked, what is the difference between the number alone and the word we say for it? It irks, that distance. The birds are darts, are darning needles, are gasps of sorrow, are bickering in the bare trees, are gripping bark, are gorging on seeds, are sparks on the wire, are gone again, lifting as you stumble through their cloud.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Zoë Ryder White’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Iterant, Plume, and Threepenny Review, among others. Her most recent chapbook, Via Post, won the Sixth Finch chapbook contest in 2022. Her chapbook, HYPERSPACE, is available from Factory Hollow. She co-authored, with Nicole Callihan, A Study in Spring. Elsewhere, their most recent collaboration, won the Sixth Finch chapbook competition in 2019. A former elementary school teacher, she edits books for educators about the craft of teaching.
by Grace Q. Song
We will never know what broke
The course of the full moon train.
At the restaurant, people stared
As the performance of our lives
Crashed out the window into destiny.
It wasn’t awful at first. Only funny.
The cold, watery light ran down
My dress, and I didn’t know what to do.
You were so wrong, so right,
I felt almost betrayed. Those were the years
You watched me through, standing
Like a pale flush across the lake.
I was leaving when you told me
What kind of person I’d become.
Now the train won’t come on time.
The moon had broken over the table,
And I couldn’t pick up all
The aluminum pieces on the floor.
I am a terrible sister,
And an even more painful daughter.
We will change each other.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Grace Q. Song is a writer residing in New York City. Her poetry and fiction have been published in The Boiler, The Offing, The Cincinnati Review, The Minnesota Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Past works have been selected for inclusion in Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. She is the winner of the 11th Annual Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, selected by Vi Khi Nao, and she studies English at Columbia University.
by Sherine Elise Gilmour
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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Some mornings the bus is a miniature party.
Our words like streamers.
At each bus stop: a different home. A door opens
and a child with a ventilator is carried down.
At each stop, applause from all the mothers lucky enough
to ride the bus. “Go Sasha, go Sasha.” We compete
to catch the child’s attention. Who will hit the right tone?
The right volume. Right smile or word or phrase to make
the child notice and grin. The children who can walk do so
down the rubber yellow-lines of the bus, turned fashion runway.
We want them to strut. We call and hoot. We pout,
blow kisses. We are inappropriate
with our affections, nicknames, the way we touch their hands
like mini saviors, the passing of saints. The way we demand
high fives. “She’s better looking than Beyonce. Watch out for the boys.”
“Look at Jaden’s Micky Mouse sneakers. He’s so handsome today.”
The children are rained down on in every language.
For their clothing and their hair. For the toys
they are technically not allowed to bring onto the city-sanctioned bus.
“Oh my! Is that Thomas? Is that Miss Piggy? Is that your blinky?”
“Look what Eduardo has today, his very own cellphone.
Mr. Businessman, that’s what you are.”
We give them futures, possible and improbable.
Proclamations: “Look at all these beautiful, blessed children.”
Excuses: “That’s okay, you don’t have to say “hi.”
Tender jibing: “Are you going to stay awake so we can see your eyes?”
And for my son, always, “How is my boyfriend this morning?”
These mothers smile their widest smiles
as if paparazzi are on the bus, as if it’s picture day every day.
I am slow to rise to this kind of excitement
but manage to say good morning. My son and I take our seats
in this moving cranking manual ignition diesel-tank theater of love.
Who are these women? I have never met any like them before.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sherine Elise Gilmour graduated with an MFA in poetry from New York University. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poems and essays have appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Many Mountains Moving, River Styx, So To Speak, Tinderbox Literay Journal, and elsewhere.
by Eileen Pettycrew
Students in a Dallas school district must wear clear backpacks after Uvalde shooting.
—NPR, July 19, 2022
Is it enough to say
I’m rooting for you, though I was
never a cheerleader. Enough to say
I’m thinking of you, like a Hallmark card.
Is it enough to say my whole school
had to evacuate, shiver for hours
in the bleachers. She did it on a dare.
Her name was Bonnie, freshman calling in
a bomb scare. Is it enough
my brother cracked like a windshield
and became a stranger. That was
the year I forgot how to feel. The year
of leather drawstring purses girls carried
like dark planets. Tampons, lip gloss,
gum, cigarettes. Numbness,
my secret crush. Listen to me
blather on. I would have written sooner
but I didn’t know what to say.
And now it’s December.
Is it enough I see sunrise
reflected in my car window,
and silhouetted there,
the bare branches of trees,
still carrying their dose of night?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Eileen Pettycrew’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in ONE ART, New Ohio Review, CALYX Journal, Cave Wall Press, SWWIM Every Day, and other journals. In 2022 she was one of two runners-up for the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry from Press 53, and a finalist for both the NORward Prize for Poetry from New Ohio Review as well as the New Letters Award for Poetry. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Eileen lives in Portland, Oregon.
by Tin Fogdall
We sat upstairs while they slipped her into a bag.
On the desk, in a photograph album,
she kept walking into the ocean,
holding her sister’s hand.
Sun dribbled down between javelin firs.
A small amount of other people’s ashes
get mixed in. Your signature
means you understand.
Without her body, she was washing away.
Memory is a strange Bell— I can’t
make it ring. The phoebes are coming back,
their ridiculous, wagging tails
a balm. Blown limbs
beside the trail. I can’t haul back up
how she touched or smelled
there is no hemisphere where she registers,
but when I sing,
it’s her voice.
She was mostly oxygen, sixty percent
breath. For one hundred mornings,
I’ve stood at the mirror
—it’s not me there but the light
I keep shedding. By this time,
she has fallen
somewhere as rain.
Note: The italicized line is by Emily Dickinson.
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Tin Fogdall’s work appears or is forthcoming in The Missouri Reivew, The Threepenny Review, Poetry, Slate, Green Mountains Review, and Poetry Northwest, among other venues. She earned her M.A. in creative writing from Boston University and lives now in Vermont. On Instagram, she documents a minor obsession with circles.
by January Gill O'Neil
by Wendy Wisner
Blood in the sink when I spit.
Blood on the morning sheets.
Milk, too. Is that blood
on the baby’s belly button?
Are those mosquito bites
on our older son’s arms
or something worse, something
he could give the baby?
Blood and milk, blood and milk.
How many lines can I write
between the baby’s cries?
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Wendy Wisner is the author of two books of poems, Epicenter and Morph and Bloom. Her essays and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Tar River Poetry, Nashville Review, The Washington Post, Full Grown People, The Manifest-Station, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in New York with her husband and two kids. Find her at www.wendywisner.com.
by Iris Jamahl Dunkle
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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It's how I arrived in this place. Dust. Blood.
Thin figures. Shadows stretched like bars
against a farm gone fallow. Gone dust. Gone wind.
My grandmother said, Steinbeck never got it right.
The place. The leaving and how it felt:
to be child in a world gone back to dust.
She'd breath the dust into me some birthdays.
Or, when I'd come back to visit from college.
Until the dust stuck to my tongue, clouded my eyes
as I tried to drift farther and farther away.
She whispered into my ear the songs she'd sung
in the canneries those long hours she'd worked as a child.
Until the land had become me. No way to escape
the need to carry it, to tell it right.
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Iris Jamahl Dunkle is an award-winning literary biographer and poet. Her books include the biography Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and her fourth poetry collection West : Fire : Archive (The Center for Literary Publishing, 2021). She is currently writing a biography about the author Sanora Babb which will be published by the University of California Press 2024.
by Carolina Hotchandani
Sometimes I believed the future lived
under the surface
of the present,
and if I tried, I could
unveil it. The way my mother
peeled back the artichoke’s scales,
paring away a light fuzz
to reach the heart.
Lately, I’m afraid of the cores
I find strewn about the counter.
My father’s eating peaches,
cherries, plums.
So many bananas.
He even tries to eat the peels.
I remember how he’d prick
his finger each day—
a globule of blood rising
from beneath this moment
to its outer tip. He’d stamp
his blood onto a strip to learn
if he was fine.
Now he takes in the sweetness
he always feared.
As a child
I shuddered at that lance,
that scarlet sphere.
I worry: his worry’s gone.
Tira as minhocas da cabeça,
my mother says.
Pull those worms out of your head.
Imagined futures:
I need you to stay under
the grass, wriggling deep in the earth.
Close to its unknown core.
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Carolina Hotchandani won the 2023 Perugia Press Prize for her debut poetry collection, The Book Eaters, which will be released in September 2023. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Diode, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, and other journals. She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska.
While You Were Gone
by Kathleen McGookey
by Eman Hassan
by Helena Mesa
Not even flight patterns offer certainty tonight.
Which words will bring you beside me tonight?
The plane trembles over your state line. Mountains,
plains—how do I map our geography tonight?
Rain ferries across your streets, inverts the stars.
Nearly asleep, I know snow muffles my eaves tonight.
Once, we lived together—our time marked
by a season, a plan. Why think of that lease tonight?
Extrañar, to miss, as in, extraño tu voz en la mañana.
Me extraña, as in, how odd your voice feels tonight.
You say planes are also arrivals. Why is there always
a suitcase half-packed? Forgive my defeat tonight.
These nights, these archipelagos of words:
Say skin, breath, tongue—say Helena, here, tonight.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Helena Mesa is the author of Where Land Is Indistinguishable from Sea (forthcoming from Terrapin Press) and Horse Dance Underwater, and is an editor for Mentor & Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
by Jennifer Saunders
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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“ … Whatever
mistakes we make, we will become what we are
because of our blunders.”
Dorianne Laux “Zulu, Indiana (An Ode to the Internet)”
O stirrup pants, o acid-washed jeans, o single
black lace glove and rubber bracelets. Forgive me,
but you were mistakes, all of you,
you and the thigh-ripped-open jeans
I criss-crossed with skate laces. O big hair,
o green eye shadow, o hanging out on the beach
drinking ill-gotten Bartles & Jaymes and letting JP
of the fake ID unlace me and feed me
vodka-spiked watermelon
and slide his fingers inside me.
O dark parking lot, o end of the lane.
O you missteps, you well-practiced mistakes,
you paving of my crooked road. Fender-bender
in the McDonald’s parking lot
on the way home from Great America
because I was too impatient
to wipe the steam from the back window.
The ride I hitched with those guys
who turned out to be high
and on shore leave. O narrow escapes.
That haircut sophomore year.
That blue prom dress. Jellies.
Not going to Homecoming with G
because nice guys scared me
more than JP and his Alabama Slammers.
O grapefruit diet, o Jane Fonda’s Workout, o beginning
of erasure. Daisy Dukes and ankle boots,
D+ in calculus, girl sitting in the back row
chewing her hair. O child, o paving stone,
o boat somebody else rowed. Off-the-shoulder
sweatshirts, “Let’s Get Physical,” o parachute pants—
the kind that were so easy to slip out of.
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