by Diannely Antigua

Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s annual Miami Book Fair preview. Please subscribe to SWWIM Every Day to watch a daily video by a woman-identifying writer appearing at Miami Book Fair 2024. Enjoy this taste of poetry, sponsored by Miami Book Fair and SWWIM. We look forward to seeing you at the Fair!

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Appearance at Miami Book Fair 2024: Diannely Antigua, Sunday, 11/24/2024, 2 pm, Room 8303, and Sunday, 11/24/2024, 4 pm, Room 8303

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I want to write about joy—I decide this when I sit down at my desk,
the overwatered succulents lining the perimeter. I don’t

understand the ratio of plant to water to dirt, so I drown
them in what I think is needed. I forget sun.

I forget patience. I try to forget the look death makes—
the Haworthia, the snake plant, my grandmother, the dog.

I wanted to write about joy. Everything is pale.
Outside, winter persists, even though it’s May.

A lover once told me he believed in the risk
of joy, used it to explain away the kiss on my neck.

He’s married now, the risk of joy tattooed on the right side
of his own neck, his new wife’s name on the left.

My friend said I dodged a bullet with that one, I say
I would’ve opened my chest to it.

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Diannely Antigua (she/her) is a Dominican American poet and educator born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection, Ugly Music, won a 2020 Whiting Award and the Pamet River Prize. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and the winner of fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in the Best of the Net Anthology and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, and is the youngest and first person of color to hold the title. As host of the Bread & Poetry podcast, she aims to make poetry more accessible to the community, interviewing poets and non-poets alike about what poetry means to them.

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"Wanting" from Good Monster, copyright 2024 by Diannely Antigua, used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.