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.
April and a morning shower blankets us, covers the shed out back where my father’s fishing equipment is stored. On mornings like this, he searches beneath rain gutters for worms loosening the earth with his hands, sifting it back and forth; collecting each body he finds in old crusted Tupperware for bait. Sometimes, when there isn’t enough, he cuts them in half. How concerned he is, ensuring there’s enough. It’s the silence he likes: the solace of being alone, standing on the bank holding his fishing rod, watching nothing but the tug of the line against the current until a fish takes the bait. Most days when he brings home a good catch I like to watch my mother clean the fish. I stand by the kitchen sink staring at her blood-covered hands as she tugs their heads backwards, stripping the skin from its flesh: this new kind of nakedness.
Amanda Gomez is a Latinx poet from Norfolk, Virginia. She is the author of the chapbook, Wasting Disease (Finishing Line Press). She was a semi-finalist for the 2019 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry from Nimrod International Journal, a finalist for the 2018 James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review, and a 2017 recipient for the Academy of American Poets University Prize. Her poetry can be read in print and online journals such as PANK, Tupelo Quarterly, and others.
