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.

Icons, Limonos Monastery

Saints here are everywhere
but they're strange ones, give or take

       —their names barely familiar
their miracles mostly unheard of
their creed whetted on sea-crested hills
   and a promise of salt.—

They group the walls of the chapels and
draw the faithful in long black droves,
carrying food and their sunday smiles,
as they trickle in like prayer beads
one by one, to the repetitive
kyrie eleison and the sweet strokes
of incense and petals.

They linger in old stones, the holy ones,
their eyes cast always on the heavens
as if scrutinizing a great canvas
that may yet reveal the secrets of liberation,
the one art they couldn't master.


Milla van der Have (The Netherlands, 1975) is a Gemini. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Cherry Tree, Otis Nebula, and Ninth Letter among others. She's the author Ghosts of Old Virginny (Aldrich Press), a chapbook about Virginia City, Nevada. Milla lives and works in Utrecht, The Netherlands with her wife and two rabbits (that occasionally appear in her poems).



Vesuvius

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