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.
To reach the raised-bed garden, I drag my body through the caterpillar grass and fescue until I’m at the cinderblocks packed with dirt and the marigolds I grew to ward off pests. The flowers failed. I take a rock,
pluck squash bugs from leaves’ pale underbellies and smear their guts. Each insect death is a heavy death, so I hush-wail I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The necks
of thick-rind squash curve: a yellow grin or frown, depending on the way you see the contour, and the tomatoes rupture, skin split like a wound and the mint, sprawled green
almost to seed, spits out its minuscule purple flowers, so tiny but tough as bullets.
Bridget Bell teaches English at Durham Technical Community College in Durham, NC. She also proofreads poetry manuscripts for Four Way Books. Her work has been published in several literary journals including Eclectica, The New Ohio Review, The Los Angeles Review Online, and Folio, among others. Her poem, "Raising Mothers," was recently featured in a presentation called “The Trials, Tolls, and Triumphs of Motherhood: The Many Faces of Postpartum Depression," through the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas.
