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.
What hour do you swivel open to unfurl your corolla the color of royals? It’s early, I know, before sunrise. Your pollinators up at dawn, too, to tumble down your white throat. I pet you as I pass, velvet bell horn under my thumb. Some say your vines are invasive— if given the space, you are voracious, twining around sunflower stalk, stair rail, fence. But by afternoon you begin to fold the parasol of your face. How many ways to say your blooms die each day: Monday’s flower is not Tuesday’s. You blossom like shark teeth.
Amy Debrecht received her MFA in poetry writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her poems and reviews have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Salt Hill, Poet Lore, Sou’wester, Natural Bridge, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She lives in St. Louis with her partner and pup, where she works as an editor and volunteers for Cinema St. Louis.
