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.
How do you love me let me count your ways With an uppercut, a kidney jab, a backhand slap Hair by the roots, jammed to a barricade, slugged To the ground, to the depth your fist can reach Freely, as men are left to do; purely, from jealousy and spite With passion driven by monstrous ego, with hands and words and knives and knees and covetousness of my body, my choice, my dignity, my liberty, my land With boots and bullets, tanks and airstrikes, with need to prove your dominance, your excuses, your entitled rage On court benches and my kitchen floor, in senate chambers and through cities’ streets, on every step and stage Seizing my smiles, my pleas, my breath Despite all tears I’ll love you better after death
Kathy Jacobs' work has been published in SWWIM Every Day: Sing the Body, Plainsongs, The Comstock Review, Finelines, and anthologies by the Nebraska Writers Group, including How It Looks from Here: Poetry from the Plains.
My friend won’t go sleeveless because of her Czech arms. She means her meaty upper arms, arms like Ruben’s beauties, artful arms that remind me of fictional southern belles, mamas and grand-mamas with flesh like bread dough, moist and heavy.
I admire my friend’s solid arms and her line of women who worked them over a washboard. Used them to wield a hoe and whip oxen; assemble artillery casings and drape over a flannel shoulder while doing the two-step or polka.
Arms like mine from eastern Poland, where they dug beets and potatoes. Made the sign of the cross and lit Sabbath candles, both.
A generation and two later they wrung chicken necks, planted gladiolus bulbs and a daughter in the ground. Learned to turn a steering wheel, hurl a bowling ball and carry a suitcase away from a marriage.
Arms, in this life, that taught on a blackboard and rocked some babies, reached up at family weddings to dance the YMCA, washed a father on his deathbed now jiggle and flap when I wave goodbye.
Today I’ll put on a sleeveless shirt, grab my trowel and a bag of mixed bulbs. Today I’ll plant gladioli. Row after row.
Kathy Jacobs is a retired nursing professor who recently left the fellowship of gifted and generous Nebraska poets and is at play finding others in the Twin Cities. Her poems have been published in Plainsongs, The Comstock Review, and several anthologies from The Nebraska Writers Guild, including How It Looks from Here: Poetry from the Plains.
