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.

Self-Portrait with No Spare Parts

It has been steam cleaned

in 10 states. Slapped by a mother

spat on by a boss. This is how

everything is fine until it is not.

            It changed its mind

like umbrellas brought

on all the wrong days. 

It wore shoulder pads and burned

          a husband with a curling iron. 

It called 911. It did what it had to do. 

It held your bag of hygiene, oily

perfume, rotten teeth. Joy and pain

          live on the same street.  

It has an expiration date.  

It hung in the closet like a bad check.

It flagged all the pools of blood

        and the grief of mothers.

It was a dirge of old wars and vacant

parking lots. It was the place I sat alone

and cried all nightmare long.  

It is a junkyard clock

        with dog-chewed hands. 

It is God mouthing the anthem

I never learned. It gnawed

        at the wind shield, made of rain.  

It sat in a diner all night long, waiting

for the lord or the guy with a day job

        to take his knife home.  

This is the lake that lives within the skin,

that lives with an illness that dangles 

like a yo-yo on a string. And another body

       beget out of mine, long and wide

as the Rio Grande. The body just wants

something loyal and divine,

     a dog’s eyelids fluttering in sleep.


Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers and In The Event of Full Disclosure, and the forthcoming collection, Still-Life With God. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Apogee, BOMB, Cleaver Magazine, Cultural Weekly, Diode, Florida Review, Flock Lit, Green Mountains Review, Le Zaporogue, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Rust + Moth, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Tampa Review, and Verse Daily, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of The Net. Atkins teaches creative writing at Blue Ridge Community College and lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County VA with her family. See more at www.cynthiaatkins.com.

Poem in Which I Forget Whether I Wanted Anything Else Back Then

Choosing