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.
Some things are obvious: I write my best poetry when we’re not on speaking terms. The cellulite on my thighs grows by the day, blubber both weeping & whale song. I take pills to forget that my father sounds his happiest when speaking in Hindi. You ask whether I’ve eaten even when I’m angry with you. My grandparents’ house used to be magic, until I was fifteen & it was a house. The way you grasp my hand smells like cigarette smoke, patchouli, desire, map, so ordinary I can forget how extraordinary all this is. I want you to choose me more than I want you to love me. Now you know everything I know about my father. Rilke says go to the limits of your longing. Janis Joplin says freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose. I say I’m still mad at you, you know, & you say shut up & fall asleep on the other end of the phone. This is what it must be like for people who believe in God: knowing someone else is there, breathing, in the dark.
Topaz Winters is the Singaporean-American author of So, Stranger (Button Poetry 2022) & Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing (Button Poetry 2019 & 2024). She serves as editor-in-chief of Half Mystic Press & lives between New York & Singapore.
