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.

Amazonian Abecedarian

 

Amazonium, strongest metal on Earth, forged into
bullet-deflecting bracelets, shiny silver
cuffs inspiring confidence, helping me thwart
derisive bullies who openly threatened
extending their reign of terror beyond shouts of freak,
feaperra, hound of Hades, eye
gunk of Giganta, chew toy of Cheetah, jock itch of Jor-El. Great
Hera! Athena knows I only possessed
imagination and daydreams of the invisible
jet whisking me away before obnoxious prima donnas
kicked my face in because they thought they had
license to make my benign and solitary existence
miserable, but Marston’s immortal maiden
never succumbed to imbeciles or threats,
openly defied those plotting to plunder
Paradise Island, place that sounded like abuela’s Cuba,
quiet Eden, uncharted isle where peace
reigned supreme and women enjoyed
sailing, fencing, and horseback riding.
Themyscira, I have longed for your refuge
under the full moon’s omniscient,
voluptuous light, desired to enter the sanctum of Diana’s
world, elusive, mysterious, impervious, never
X’d on man-made maps—
your beauty surpasses anything
Zeus could’ve ever imagined.

 

Rita Maria Martinez’s poetry collection, The Jane and Bertha in Me (Kelsay Books), celebrates Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre. Her poetry appears in the Notre Dame Review, Ploughshares, and The Best American Poetry Blog. Martinez’s work also appears in the textbook Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Literary Nonfiction, Poetry and Drama, and in the anthology Burnt Sugar, Caña Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish. Visit Martinez’s website at https://www.comeonhome.org/ritamartinez.

 

Reconstructions

Athena gets her first dick pic