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.

Ginny in June

loves dandelions and stands
with an open globe,
and then blows and shrieks
and looks for the next. In the ball field
where we let the dogs run
the grasses have gone to seed,
the baseball diamond is unraked, the basketball
hoops removed, so that kids in quarantine
won’t try to play, won’t yell
and shout and jump this spring.
She won’t remember this. She won’t
remember how we held our breath.
The broad leaf plantain nods
its swollen bud, bindweed twists
through the chain links, a constellation of pink
clover swirls through the smaller white.
She picks flowers one by one.
She sends them flying
on the path of her breath.


Lisa Rhoades is the author of The Long Grass (Saint Julian Press, 2020) and Strange Gravity (Bright Hill Press, 2004). Individual poems have appeared at Barrow Street, Poetry East, Prime Number, Saranac Review, South Carolina Review, and Psaltery & Lyre among others. In addition to teaching poetry, she works as a pediatric nurse in Manhattan. She lives on Staten Island with her spouse and their two children. Find her online at lisarhoades.com.

Facts & Figures

Elegy with Damocles and an Office Bulb