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.
I grew my mind with the work ethic of a weed— eating baked beans and canned asparagus. Learned to fix my mind’s thick accent, fit in with a clique, snap and screwtop, spill-proof and shatter-free. I rolled with the kind of knack it took to pull up a decorative bootstrap with a borrowed degree, bold as an albino deer in the open, ears alert to the drawn bow.
Amy Thatcher is a native of Philadelphia, where she works as a public librarian. Her poems have been published in Guesthouse, Bear Review, Rhino, SWWIM, Rust + Moth, Iron Horse Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Palette Poetry, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Shore, and Anti-Heroin Chic. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets 2024 and is forthcoming in The Journal and Denver Quarterly.
I pray, approaching the rapture in their open, dying eyes: racoons, skunks, the occasional dog— its owner, desperate, calling Ollie, Ollie… A Hail Mary can’t help, but I say one anyway because it’s all I can do to relieve the weeping blister of my brain from studying their sweet crushed skulls. Sometimes, I’ll drag a doe into the reeds to keep my secret: I am not a nice lady.
Amy Thatcher is a native Philadelphian, where she works as a public librarian. Her poems have been published in Guesthouse, Bear Review, Rust + Moth, Rhino, and are forthcoming in Crab Creek Review.
