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.
A chat on a moonlit terrace where one person is more in love than the other. Both laugh, each sounds different.
Boatman struggling in the biceps of a river.
Some memories are redder than others. I watched my brother beat another boy on the playground because he called our father a bastard. Saw the boy’s body crumple like a paper flower, his nose spurt crimson blooms. Nobody knew what a bastard was.
Labor pains.
The scent of street food wafting up from the vendor’s cart as he puts together a paper cone of puffed rice, slivers of onion, cucumber, tomato and hot green chilies, lemon juice and mustard oil. The tide of saliva that rises in the mouth. This is not a red memory. It’s definitely green. Lime green. Raw mango green.
Ribbons in shiny black hair. Swinging braids.
A man who carried newspapers, magazines, bestsellers, and comic books wrapped in a white sheet. A door-to-door visiting library. He smelled of paper and ink. The rush of blood to my face when I opened the door.
Train journeys. Hot wind. Paddy fields, egret, and buffalo. Towns with names like Itarsi and Manmad Junction where you will never get off but whose names you murmur in time with the rhythm of the rails. Scalding hot chai numbs your tongue. Coal dust from the steam engine blows back in the wind. Take care it doesn’t get in your eyes. Some of it is still on fire.
Yamini Pathak was born in India. She is the author of chapbooks, Atlas of Lost Places (Milk and Cake Press, 2020) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Vida Review, About Place Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, and elsewhere. A Dodge Foundation Poet in Schools, she serves as poetry editor for Inch micro-chapbooks (Bull City Press). Yamini has received her MFA in poetry from Antioch University, LA.
