SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.

Teaching Tammy Faye's Daughter to Swim

Cup your hands like this, I said,
and when your arm comes out of the pool,
just roll your head to the side for air

She giggled, slurped water, puffed her
chipmunk cheeks and squirted me
through gaps in her teeth

Later, we climbed out and dangled our feet,
her baby fat pooched over her swimsuit
like white-flour dumplings

Then we heard two pool workers picking up Coke cans behind us

They bought another Rolls Royce yesterday.
Makes me sick

          Wonder how many little old ladies
paid for that

They laughed like the shrill whine of the pool’s vacuum

I turned and looked Tammy Faye's daughter straight in the eye,
but she'd disappeared—

          gone scuba diving in Maui, 

enough oxygen strapped to her back
so she'd never have to surface
again.


Joy Roulier Sawyer holds an MA from New York University, where she received the Herbert Rubin Award for Outstanding Creative Writing. She is the author of Tongues of Men and Angels (White Violet Press, 2016), and her poetry appears in such diverse publications as Books & Culture, LIGHT Quarterly, Lilliput Review, New York Quarterly, St. Petersburg Review, Theology Today, and others. Joy teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. 
 

Great Bear

So Long