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.

Road to Labelle, FLA

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!


There is no mortician or used car dealer in the town
where they tested the bomb. No place to bury bodies
without disturbing nuclear dust, Oppenheimer dead
from multiple cellular mutations. We move out of desert
towards hurricane memories and seashell swamps and she
tells me about the acres of land she will buy, the horses
she will count and name. We have nothing in common
but funerals and highways and she searches for cigarettes.
I wonder if I am wrong to be suspicious of grapes grown
in sand fertilized by heron hatchlings. Pirate’s gold. Purple
wildflowers shaded by Spanish moss. Azaleas and palm trees
search for April sunshine and billboards appear like haunted
ships in fog. Breast enhancements, injury law hotline, gun show
at the state fairgrounds. I suggest Clementine, Madeline,
Layla, knowing that she hasn’t slept more than three hours
at a time for the last four years. O Lord Make a Shepherd
of Me
in this land of bone dice and my stepmother’s suicide.
I want to swallow salt and fiddler crabs, but I taste panther
and pig, the lovely buzzing of low flying planes. The wildfire
daydreams of insomniacs and horses and unexpected cows.


Beth Gordon is a poet, mother, and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. She is the author of Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe (2019, Animal Heart Press); Particularly Dangerous Situation (2020, Clare Songbirds Publishing);This Small Machine of Prayer (2021, Kelsay Books); and The Water Cycle (2022, Variant Literature). Beth is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art; Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press; and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Twitter and Instagram @bethgordonpoet.

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