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.
The woman who once wore this dress, this hot pink sundress, must have missed her connection in Atlanta. Which carousel had the flight attendant said? Finally her first solo trip where she could feel like an island, a droplet in the ocean. Where she’s nothing but eat, sleep, beach. The dress was for that beach week that made her seem like she had a closet of hot pink everything. I’ll wear it to feel feminine, feminine is hard for me to wear too. Dress says, we are fun or looking for fun.
I buy the toiletry kit that traveled with the dress as well. The size of a cantaloupe. So much to tell with a toiletry kit, a personal apothecary so she could stay herself while traveling—her brands, her lavender, her forecast, her conditions. This trip, I’ve decided, she was going natural, not a single blush or stick, just lip gloss and lotion to put on a bug bite. Had to love each of her freckles without foundation, let go of having her hair straight and start to love her wavy look. Her shampoo bottle, full: not relying on hotel shampoo says she cared about herself a certain way.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks and Taking the Homeless Census, which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident at The Betsy Writer’s Room, she lives in her hometown Boston and teaches in the PoemWorks community.
