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.
above us there are no helicopters not like when the wind smelled like california soot and every hour sirens wove their hair into ours and sung names to enchant cacophony say their names and we were home your sister newborn in my arms protecting her life a protest
weeks before, each time a plane scored the berkeley sky in white you would point up say mamma because i am always in the sky even when my skin burns in the sun next to yours how my eyes leak with storms you cannot yet name we stand in unhinged weather
there are no helicopters today you bang on a wheelbarrow with dried bamboo stalks as drum sticks and lift your toddler throat up to shout ‘cotto! over and over again a screamo chorus lyrics perfectly formed to your ears i nod only yes and keep beat
at the people’s park marchers assemble with banners of i can’t breathe san pablo, i can hear the horns of a car parade inside the mourners shout behind masks from open windows while a virus flies around us all pandemic in crown and white
surrounded by fences i can keep you safe and breathing until i can’t every door has the threat of splinter
there are no helicopters today ‘cotto you yell
somewhere they descend somewhere a body hangs halfway between metal and earth
Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia. She is the author of Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate and the chapbooks profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She has received fellowships and residencies with Cave Canem, The Obsidian Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. She is a member of the SF Writers Grotto and the Carolina African American Writers Collective. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts, which has published over 900 Latinx voices in its history. She is an emerging visual artist and digital archivist, particularly with StoryJoy, which she co-founded with her mother, Dr. Norma Thomas. She is the lead coordinator for Nomadic Press in Philadelphia and a senior researcher and editor on various grants in education and literature. Find her on all the platforms @rainaleon.
