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.
By the fistful, licorice-black, Georgia clay-red, cheddar-yellow pills pressed into my palm. A doctor wrote the scrip. Remedy for doughy arms, belly, thighs. Shiva swallowing forest fires. Wide awake for three consecutive sunrises, scribbling in a spiral notebook indecipherable inky knots. Even the teenage poems perspire through their clothes. I eat only flavored lip gloss. This is before college and weed, before speed freak. Before White Cross composed a term paper overnight. Teetering on platform shoes, dazed, doll-size, I spread my bramble of hair across the ironing board, press one hank at a time, iron hissing, singed, smelling faintly of smoke, chrysanthemums at my feet.
Julia Thacker's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Gulf Coast Online, The Massachusetts Review, The New Republic, and others. A portfolio of her work is included in the 25th anniversary issue of Poetry International. Twice a fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she has also received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
