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.
Your limbless body winging down the side- walk. Ess, ess, ess. A stutter, a slow leak, a hiss. A thread following an invisible needle stitching a quick hem in the air. Frantic to find an escape under the fence, you bunch up against the boards like ribbon candy or a flamenco ruffle—com- pressed esses on esses. When I was six, we called your like grass snakes, nearly as common as the blades your kin zipped between, green- &-black lightning parting the grass as they passed. The chase was as thrilling as the capture, the ropy creature slipping through my fingers, one hand to the next as I attempted to detain it— slipping like the chain of a luxurious necklace, silky and supple. Look!, I say, pointing you out to my dog, wanting someone with whom to share my wonderment. The dog brings her nose to the pile you’ve made of yourself beside the fence, just as you begin to unfold, loop after loop, and glide beneath a ragged plank. The dog jumps backward then, surprised to find that something alive could flow like water.
Yvonne Zipter is author of the poetry collections The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets, Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal (Lambda Literary Award Finalist), and Like Some Bookie God, as well as the Russian historical novel Infraction and the nonfiction books Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet. Her individual published poems are being sold in two repurposed toy-vending machines in Chicago, the proceeds of which support a local nonprofit organization.
