Inevitable

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Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s annual Miami Book Fair preview. Please subscribe to SWWIM Every Day to watch a daily video by a woman-identifying writer appearing at Miami Book Fair 2024. Enjoy this taste of poetry, sponsored by Miami Book Fair and SWWIM. We look forward to seeing you at the Fair!

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Appearance at Miami Book Fair 2024: Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Saturday, 11/23/2023, 3:30 pm, Room 8303

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Before the mirage, I see the zigzagging slap of sun
It’s an easy light, rocking back and forth
Look, I see this as a simple art:

The bright on the summer porch rails, the moon
hand-clamping the veranda

the night sky keeps talking about morning;
I’m just a little child witnessing this all.

What to do when the sun is setting?
What to do when the inevitable comes?

I’ve spent my life counting time like pennies
in my Mami’s cocina mason jar

But I know no matter what,
the next moment comes

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Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of SCAR ON/SCAR OFF, When Trying to Return Home, and Kinds of Grace. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio, and CantoMundo, and her work has been a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Best Fiction Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, and a Must-Read by Elle, Latinx in Publishing, Ms. Magazine, and Southern Review of Books. She is fiction editor at Pleiades, has been faculty at Yale Writers' Workshop and Yale Young Writers' Workshop and is an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

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This poem first appeared in the Afro-Hispanic Review. Permission granted by the poet.

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