by Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Apples are imagining themselves
by Jill Crammond
by Heidi Seaborn
At a wine bar, the sommelier queries
Do you want body or complexity?
I hesitate, weighing this choice.
My body craves complexity, again.
I have simplified my life: I write. I love.
Each with the clarity of a city skyline
seen from a distance after a rainstorm.
My muddied boots neatly stashed.
Long ago, when I first joined Facebook,
I checked the relationship option: It’s Complicated.
Having found myself caught like a lazy
housefly in my own intricate web.
I’m out with younger poets. I try to parse
the complex syntax of their lives—
familiar yet foreign. Like returning to a city
after decades or encountering
a former lover and remembering only
the language of his tongue on your skin.
Perhaps the body can hold only
so much memory. My mouth cradles
words of advice. How easy to clarify
butter, reduce sauce with experience.
Tazzelenghe, the sommelier says, pouring
the red wine, it means cut the tongue.
______________________________________________________________________
Heidi Seaborn is author of the PANK Poetry Prize-winning An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, the acclaimed debut Give a Girl Chaos and Comstock Chapbook Award-winning Bite Marks, as well as the chapbooks Once a Diva and Finding My Way Home. Her recent work in Beloit Poetry Journal, Brevity, Copper Nickel, Cortland Review, Diode, Financial Times of London, Missouri Review, The Offing, Penn Review, Pleiades, The Slowdown and the Washington Post. Heidi is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA from NYU. See heidiseabornpoet.com.
by Robin Reagler
But mostly I think about love.
I think about you. I think about time
as the ocean and our stories as boats
made of paper. The fragility of our stories,
the unlikeliness of love, and the tomboy
certainty of a childhood in Arkansas
where I swallowed back down my fear
and felt things secretly, then not at all.
I think about the ocean, the engineering
within ocean waves. I feel the technicality
of my body as a part of the waves, the pull
and suck of the tides. The moon as a kind
of kindness masterminding the landscape.
I feel Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer providing
rhythm for just how the living will remember
the dead. I swear on my own skeleton that
I can see the hidden architecture inside living
things in the natural world. I remember darkness.
I remember my mother, the way she held her jaw
like stone and maintained that rigid grip
even as she was dying. I think about her.
I think about you. And my words as bricks
that sink deeper and deeper, as bricks dreaming
their way back into the earth.
______________________________________________________________________
Robin Reagler is the author of Into The The (Backlash, 2020), winner of the UK’s Best Book Award; Teeth & Teeth (Headmistress, 2018), winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz; Dear Red Airplane (Seven Kitchens, 2011, 2018) winner of the Rebound Prize; and Night Is This Anyway (Lily Poetry Books, 2022). For 22 years she led Writers in the Schools (WITS). She is a queer poet living in Texas.
by Aída Esmeralda
by Alyse Knorr
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
When you pray to your ancestors I pray too—
por favor, avó, não deixe isso ser verdade—but
I don’t ask them about the bolt piercing
the heart on your skin, or why I’m a decade late.
My mothers foretold that night you pulled me in,
foretold how you’d take my head in your
steel-trap hands. Listen: quando eu não estou
com você, estou pensando em você—can you hear it
over the coffee fields, the cries of the women
birthing in the dirt? Can you hear it underground,
deeper than the seeds and the roots and the cashbox
and the mantle? Down in the core I’m keening
quando estou com você, estou pensando em beijar você;
down in the mantle I’m keening you home.
______________________________________________________________________
Alyse Knorr is an associate professor of English at Regis University and co-editor of Switchback Books. She is the author of three poetry collections and four poetry chapbooks as well as two non-fiction books, including, most recently, GoldenEye (Boss Fight Books 2022). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University.
by Jeanne Wagner
by Rachael Philipps
Treating Adult Children of Alcoholics: A Behavioral Approach by Douglas H. Ruben
Chapter 5: Family Rules and Contingencies
Rule 7: Do not play or enjoy yourself
Your children:
are so wonderfully quiet,
they never interrupt,
move slowly
and sit neatly
Your children:
are eyeing but not playing with the toys
I set out for them, same with the snack,
won’t leave this house a mess,
not like the others
Your children:
are still sitting where we left them
an hour ago
same TV channel
remote untouched
Your children:
have faces solemn as past presidents
voices tight and low
in their throats,
emanating from a swallow
Your children:
have bruises I can’t see fizzing
in their armpits
from your hard-pressing thumb
deployed on the walk over
Your children:
show no workings
feet together
hands in lap
eyes concave mirrors
open little echoes
______________________________________________________________________
Rachael Philipps is a poet and journalist and a properly misanthropic Welsh woman with an unhealthy dependency on caffeine and marmalade. She is constantly chastened by her iPhone’s audio settings for playing LCD Soundsystem too loud whilst out on her regular jogs around the mean streets of Westchester. Rachael was awarded a Bethany Arts Poetry Residency in 2021 and was the recipient of an AWP Writer to Writer mentorship for poetry in 2020. Her journalism spans broadcasting for the BBC plus writing and editorial work for print titles including Time Out London, The New York Times, and Food and Wine Magazine. She is currently at work on her first chapbook.
by Melinda Palacio
by Carrie Vaughn
The lungs are not two large balloons.
Spongy bronchus branches stretch down and
hold clustered pockets of air like fruit hidden
in our core, flavored with each inhale whether
mountain or wildfire or assassin. Each breath is
an exchange. Out. In. Useless for useful. A bargain
struck in collective exhale by earth’s first life. A deal
fragile as any tree in a harvester’s blades. Tenuous
as a trachea. Infection grew my mom’s lungs darker
daily, until they were only shadows, her pink and
flexing organs swapped for construction paper
cutouts barely twitching in the wind.
The left lung is somewhat smaller than the right.
Space must be made for the heart.
______________________________________________________________________
Carrie Vaughn is a poet and middle school science teacher. She received her MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. She currently lives in Baltimore, MD with her partner and their musclebeast mutt. Her work has been published in Entropy and Grist.
by Ada Limón
by Vivian Eyre
The wall photograph—taken right there—
a girl, lying on your stomach, face almost touching
the tidal pond. Looking for what? Water fleas,
red-plumed tube worms,
the widening rings of being.
How much time to see—
as much time as it takes to make a friend—
cunners & hat pin urchins,
snails & gills, rock grit & us.
I’ve read about Aristotle & limpets,
how a muscled foot locomotes
into the sea to feed. How a limpet’s shell
imprints like a scar/tattoo on the home-rock.
And the limpet always returns to the same spot.
Aristotle never figured out how
this homing works.
A home can be a room in an inn,
beyond the deep & wide, Sheepscot,
sun-dried rocks, glistening.
______________________________________________________________________
Vivian Eyre is a Rhode Island-based poet, and the author of the poetry chapbook, To the Sound (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Massachusetts Review, The Fourth River, Moon City Review, and elsewhere. She served as a rescue volunteer for marine life on Long Island.
by Lara Hamidi-Ismert
Fridays I drive west on Quincy—
a fox avoiding its foxhole—
to the wheat fields, away from
someone else’s bed, the sweet
mildew of beer-rotting floors.
I lie on my back in the weeds,
itchy, cold, alone, and let only
the stalks graze me. Out here
the obtrusive city light is hushed
by the dark. I see meteors streak
the sky far more often than my
mother ever confessed they do,
and she never warned of the cry
a mountain lion makes when
it’s crouched low in the grasses
of southeastern Kansas, like
a baby left on a gravel road—
confused, hungry, beckoning.
______________________________________________________________________
Lara Hamidi-Ismert is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Her poetry appears in Caustic Frolic, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Tether's End Magazine. She has also published articles on the mathematics related to quantum mechanics in Communications in Mathematical Physics and New York Journal of Math. Lara earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Nebraska after earning a BA in creative writing and a BS in mathematics from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. When she’s not mathing, she writes poetry and short fiction, acts in theatre productions, hikes with her husband, and scoops her four cats’ litter boxes.
by Maw Shein Win
My ovary, an egg desert.
Fortnight Lily, petal armor.
Uterus, container of blood memory.
Left ovary, a mourning bud.
Swallow painkillers, lean back in tub.
One perfumed fibroid, rock melon.
Remove seed pods from cervix. Bouquet effect.
Floating frond, an enigma in the canal.
Disorderly array of tissues, tendrils.
Blooms in dark.
______________________________________________________________________
Maw Shein Win’s poetry collection, Invisible Gifts: Poems, was published by Manic D Press (2018). Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California. Her poetry collection, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020), was longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award and a Northern California Book Award for Poetry, and shortlisted for the California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Golden Poppy Award. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers. See mawsheinwin.com
by Charlotte Foreman
when you were born / in a passive red sluice
some hot providence asked the palms to move
Heaven’s ferns peeled back / to give you an orange
from the groves of Orlando / light flooded the tidal
marshes / in a place south-er than south / afternoon
sun presses through Spanish moss / I don heels
from Kohl’s / a baby blue dress / become a woman
in the community center / all these lives around me
______________________________________________________________________
Charlotte Foreman is a writer and educator in Davie, Florida. She received her B.A. in Written Arts from Bard College in 2020. She is the English editor-in-chief of the international cultural criticism magazine The Swings and is currently completing a 200-hour yoga instructor training. Her work has previously been included in Yew! Magazine and Waterproof: Evidence of a Miami Worth Remembering, published by Jai Alai Books.
by Chloe Martinez
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
______________________________________________________________________
A wave slides slantways under surfers, skinny teenage
hips kicked out as they fall in water
that swirls like mercury, and the kids
shrieking in the shallows, and the tankers
still as the corpses of giants along the horizon line,
and the pier rough-tumbling out to its conclusion.
Small boys: kick water at one other.
Old people: sit on the bench. Observe.
Skinny girls: selfie, selfie, text. My baby,
not a baby anymore, tugs my shirt aside anyway, nurses.
The surfers falling and falling. The first-grader’s current
joke: Why do seagulls fly over the sea? Because,
if they flew over the bay they’d be bagels!
Bend the knees, bend the knees,
swivel-twist, fall back, fall back, fall.
A teen with boy-band bleached hair
smokes beneath the pier. You’ve been at sea
for some time now. You’ve been
sick of it. But then, the roar of the waves
calms you too. The kids are doing handstands
at the waterline like your inverted
brain, sand-suck around their hands
as the tide runs out, the world
upside-down, then slowly righting itself.
______________________________________________________________________
Chloe Martinez is a poet and scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. She works at Claremont McKenna College and lives in Claremont, CA with her husband and two daughters. See chloeAVmartinez.com.
by Julia B. Levine
and stand on the balcony, listening to deer
step through the crisp of dead leaves.
Behind me, the dream.
Your body asleep in our bed. Above me,
a river of half-living, half-dying stars,
Now the stony knock of a falling acorn.
Now my knot of terror at losing you.
Once we hiked into these hills
to a ruined homestead. Moss and vine
and bramble. House as rumor,
a few fitted stones, a fallen beam.
It was late afternoon. Red on the gold hills,
sound of a river we searched to find,
but it was just a breeze
moving between leaves.
I remember we undressed
and lay down
inside the hieroglyphics of shelter
that meant finally nothing
could hold us, your breath
on my neck, our bodies binding,
unbinding in sunlight.
______________________________________________________________________
Julia B. Levine’s many awards for her work include the Northern California Book Award in Poetry for Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight (LSU press, 2014), the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry, and the Bellevue Literary Review Poetry Prize. She has been published widely in anthologies and journals, including The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Nation. Her fifth collection, Ordinary Psalms (LSU Press) was published in 2021. She lives in Davis, California, where she serves as the current poet laureate.
by Raina J. León
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.
by Kiyoko Reidy
Stinging nettle mashed or dried, dandelion
leaves with their bitter milk—steep in tea,
add to salad, or prayer. In the waiting room,
all the women are pregnant, and I am
jealous. One moth clings to a lit
bulb, its feet burning with light,
tiny brain firing off with pleasure.
The prefix mis— originally meant
to change; now: ill, wrong, absence,
negation. As though change flows only
downstream, the direction of loss. My mother
describes field dressing a deer in detail: winding
through thick cords of intestine
like combing a daughter’s hair. The snow
dotted with birds, dark bodies against the white,
While my organs flash like abstract art
on the screen someone leans into the sky at the apex
of the world’s tallest building seventy-five
hundred miles away. Still, someone builds toward
heaven, as though they’ve learned
nothing. Still, we risk it—proliferation
of language, the collapse into confusion.
The technician with her mouth ajar
asking when I’ll meet with the doctor.
The other nurse in the room looking
worried, or just exhausted. Only one man died
building the Burj Khalifa—If we had known
in advance, the building would have been
built anyway. To call something an attempt
is to admit failure. In front of me, the uterus. A dark bean
on the ultrasound, set in the body’s center and cut
through by a crease of light—my vanishing point.
______________________________________________________________________
Kiyoko Reidy is a poet from East Tennessee. She currently lives in Nashville with her partner and two dogs. Her poetry and nonfiction is published or forthcoming in the Cincinnati Review, RHINO, Sugar House Review, Missouri Review’s poem of the week, Creative Nonfiction’s Sunday Short Reads, and elsewhere.
by Elizabeth Sylvia