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.

My Heart Was All of the Above

I’m tired because of the way the country is running
around with its scissors pointed the wrong way.

There are people wandering the wilderness,
geo-caching lies, eating them like potato chips.

The fence around my ventricles is coming apart.
Somebody just sent a message sliding across my screen,

and I fell for it. Instead of a pizza,
Amazon delivers a baby.

I want to write poems, but the kettle calls to be boiled,
the eggs are boiling even after the water molecules have

rejoined the atmosphere, and someone’s burning gas
from the tank of a car that hasn’t run in five years.

Never mind what I’ve lived through—sleeping
beneath a pool table, clinging to my horse’s neck

in a pasture of cows, listening to an ex-boyfriend cry
about the time he made pasta for the mafia.

I don’t drink coffee
and still my cups are stained.

There’s a box full of letters that need translating.
There’s a collection of scissors in jars around my house,

petrified pizza crust in the back of my mother’s old Dodge.
When the babies cried, we drove and drove and drove.


Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), finalist for the Sally Albiso Prize, and Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, Sycamore Review, The Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and NPR News / KUOW’s "All Things Considered." She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.

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