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.

Old Morning

I wish there was a word
for the way sap leaves a tree,
the moment all the women in me
turned blood into life, teeth chattering
lightning into the sky and I remember their eyes
the moment life returned to it, rain.

We grind salt on salt, dip our teary faces
in seawater, spritz rosewater as if only
we could remind the earth,
pawing at dirt, pawing at bones,
muddy paws grabbing for roots, praying
for a haunting wind
that wraps our spoils in a raven’s wing.

Would you feel them? If it poured down on you,
body as prop? If the clouds burst to ash upon your face
every time you couldn’t see yourself in a body,
every time you saw a body?


Lytey Kay is a Caribbean-American poet from South Florida. She received a BA in English and Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. Her work is forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review and has been published in Coastlines Literary Magazine and Saw Palm.

Floriography of a Birth

For Margaret