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.
Her needle's rhythm, a casual puncture. Across the cloth, holes you can hardly see.
I have always wanted to sew, but my hands knotted, couldn't follow.
When I was young, I wished hard to be measured by a man's hands.
A biblical knowledge, no woman could explain to me.
The thread fills the space the fabric makes for it, as if it too had waited its whole life for a grander design.
It wasn't what I thought.
Grandma says, trace the tree’s motherline: my body to my sisters' to my mother's to my grandmother's just as the thread’s green spreads to the leaves' jade tips.
Our shadows, a knowledge I can cool my need beneath.
Ruth Williams is the author of a poetry collection, Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), and two chapbooks, Nursewifery (Jacar Press, 2019) and Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Currently, she is an Associate Professor of English at William Jewell College.
