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.

I love the world,

 

but now I know a mother can work in her garden for ten hours, 
not know it’s her last day alive. Now I know
no one’s there to deadhead the zinnias

and the fever few. Even though the world is filled 
with injured geese and gulls, millions of acres 
of smoldering trees, 

I still love cantaloupe, how it sits on the kitchen counter 
waiting for my spoon to scoop its firm and juicy flesh. 
Even after I saw a photo 

of my mother’s casket draped with one of her mother’s quilts, 
I still loved hearing about the field of white daisies 
down the road from her grave. 

The world is both the wheat plowed under to make way for strip malls,
and a sunset like spilled orange juice above a gray lake. 
Joy resides in the mountains 

of Styrofoam and Ziplocs, while sorrow suffuses my mother’s backyard,
its cardinals and finches, its hummingbird perched in a plum tree
that lost nearly all its branches in a terrible storm. 


Martha Silano is the author of five poetry books, including Gravity Assist, The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, and Reckless Lovely, all from Saturnalia Books. Co-author of The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, Martha's poems have appeared in Paris Review, Poetry, New England Review, and American Poetry Review, among others. She teaches at Bellevue College and Seattle's Hugo House.

 

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