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.
In my mother’s dreams, she would travel the country recording all the Yiddish that remains in each broken family because everyone has a yenta, but what about the keppy? As in, let’s put our keppies together and stop being so farchadet. My mother never went to Hebrew school because Grandma chopped off all her hair. My mother never went to Hebrew school because she was too farchadet because she had one too many brothers and the thunder in her brain screams thunder, thunder, thunder over empty skies, thunder passed down from the dark-eyed woman who broke with Russia who taught my mother to clatter in the kitchen, to clatter her tongue across her teeth, to remind everyone that she had one too many brothers and what about her broken keppy? If she writes her dream dictionary I hope she offers it to all the brothers and sisters— a manifesto stitching the air, the stormy, crackling air between them all.
Emily Light’s poetry can be found in such journals as Inch, Lake Effect, Cumberland River Review, Paterson Literary Review, and others. She teaches English and lives in Boonton with her husband and son.
