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.
For a month, my father’s sister slept on the furry, black sleeper couch, spilling red wine, breastmilk, baby drool, and spit-up. She pocked the black fur with cigarette burns.
Drunk, she bought a crib, to go where? When the heavy box arrived, she drunk-pushed the load into the hallway and a staple ripped a skid-line into the new linoleum.
We dropped the ruined couch at the dump. The scar in the hall remained. My mother greeted that skidded rip each time she entered the house and when she walked barefoot
from the garage with a basket of clean clothes, she felt that rough wound with her toes.
Danielle Lemay is a poet and scientist. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 and has appeared or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, The Blue Mountain Review, New Verse News, ONE ART, Limp Wrist Magazine, Lavender Review, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere. She lives in central California with her wife, two children, and six chickens.
