by Elinor Ann Walker
by Devon Balwit
The pours look short, my need many-fingered.
Don’t worry. You can always order another,
I whisper, my own enabler, but all measures
prove insufficient to the thirst that conjures
them. Coming here, I saw two redtails copulating over
the freeway, a flutter of feathers on a pole, surely
they didn’t fret as they took again to air—
that a failing of marrow-boned creatures.
Twice today, I stumbled upon the same Millner
sonnet—IKEA, B & D, the narrator
younger than I, so presumably hipper.
Is that what fame requires—calling pain pleasure?
I close my tab, tip the bartender,
and, exiting, hug my misery tighter.
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Teacher Devon Balwit walks in all weather. In her most recent collection, Spirit Spout [Nixes Mate Books, 2023], she romps through Melville’s Moby Dick. For more, visit: pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet.
by Brook J. Sadler
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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The band does not form a closed loop.
Each end, in a dainty curve, bends
like the entrance to a formal garden—
two platinum pathways studded
with diamond stepping stones—
and circles the central diamond,
which, set by six small prongs,
rises like a modest fountain.
She never married, my mother says
when she gives it to me.
She worked and saved
and bought it for herself.
It is the day after my mother’s
last mammogram; the cancer is gone.
It is time to pass on an heirloom.
This small splash of light
on my finger illumines the room
and reflects us.
My mother has had three wedding
rings of her own. I have had none. A choice
few understand.
I wonder if Great Aunt Ethel hoped
the ring would deflect attention from men.
Or was it compensation
for a heart that had quietly broken?
Was it vanity sparkling on her finger?
Or a shield to her pride,
conversing in parlors among married women?
And what will it be for me?
I, who have no daughters or nieces.
I keep looking at the facets,
wondering.
Will these diamonds be returned
to the dark from which they came?
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Brook J. Sadler, Ph.D. is a poet, writer, and professor of philosophy, who enjoys writing across all genres. Her poems can be found in many journals, including Greensboro Review, Calyx, Kestrel, and Tampa Review, and online at the Cortland Review, South Writ Large, South Florida Poetry Journal, and The Boiler Journal. Her online prose publications include pieces at McSweeney's, Women's Review of Books, Ms. Magazine, and Aquifer.
by Hilary King
Not upright and boxy as my predecessors,
I was lean and long and tan. I was modern.
I was her pet, wasn’t I? It was me she loved,
me she wanted to be with first, later, last.
Not the husband, the lovers, the betrayers.
Interrupted from our hour by her daughter,
she flung me at that daughter. And Reader,
I leapt into mother’s violence, my keys of steel
clacking, my carriage swinging, my ribbon spooling
to be back alone with my mistress, to be teased
by her nicotine-scented fingers. Don’t pretend,
Writer, you haven’t lifted your instrument, hefted
its weight in a clenched fist when another voice
calling your false name pierces the lovely, empty page.
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Originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Hilary King is a poet now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared or will appear in Ploughshares, TAB, Salamander, Belletrist, Fourth River, The Cortland Review, and other publications. She is the author of the book of poems, The Maid’s Car. She is currently studying for her MFA degree at San Jose State University, where she is a Steinbeck Fellow.
by Beth GylysI
(with 1st line by Judy Ireland)
1.
I stand prayerless on your threshold.
2.
I stand on your threshold
choking, my mouth
stuffed with prayers.
3.
Every prayer the wind at my back,
you, my threshold.
4.
The prayers curses, a scream
blocks the threshold. Listen too long
and turn to stone.
5.
Too lonely to pray, I curl
at your threshold, hands
outstretched as if I might
gather air, make a thick braid
to climb down from the balcony.
6.
The threshold gone, I stand
in an emptiness, an archless
archway, you at dinner,
my prayers your crudité,
your plum gravy, your
raspberry millefeuille.
7.
Prayers like feathers
molting by your feet,
you smile at the threshold
still wielding the bloody dagger.
8.
Fragments of prayer—
a shredded, stained curtain
blown over the threshold.
9.
Sinks like a brick
thrown in a pond,
this prayer I think
far from any threshold.
10.
We walk across
the threshold of each other,
prayers like moths
winging in our mouths.
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Award-winning author and the founder/Principal Investigator of Beyond Bars, a Mellon sponsored literary journal for incarcerated writers and artists, Beth Gylys is the author of five books of poetry—the last two (The Conversation Turns to Wide Mouth Jars, co-written with Cathy Carlisi and Jennifer Wheelock, and Sky Blue Enough to Drink) were both named Books All Georgians Should Read. Her work has recently appeared in West Branch, The James Dickey Review, and on The Best American Poetry blog.
by Carol Young
by Lynne Knight
In none of the versions do stars reel
from their courses as Orpheus plays.
Always the stones, roots, rivers
that cannot keep still at his song.
So suppose it’s not just his song
but a woman, singing back to him.
Not Eurydice, with her mouth full of dark.
An ordinary woman, in plain dress,
singing of ordinary loss. The child
turned against her, the lover gone,
her womb drying. Or maybe a sick mother,
a brother on drugs, a boss who thinks
equality might not be a bad idea, but where
is it supported in the natural order?
A woman who sings not in patterned forms
but according to the rhythm of her blood
so that some of the songs rush,
some are slower than the slowest
shoes, unlaced, too big, dragged along
an alley street. A woman who sings
of kitchens and weeds and the fixed stars
we started with . . .
And then suppose over time not one
but thousands of women sing like this
as not one but thousands of rivers
carry songs past where we stand.
Or say it’s the birds singing,
opening their mouths at dawn
to sing of where we’ve been and gone,
of where we’ll go and be tomorrow.
Wouldn’t a woman know enough to sing
along? And doesn’t it make sense
that when the head of Orpheus floats
downriver, the mouth that sings
is no more than the ordinary mouth
of man or woman, reed or river,
grieving over time?
______________________________________________________________________
Lynne Knight has published six full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. Her poems have been widely published in journals such as Poetry and The Southern Review; her awards include a Poetry Society of America Award, a RATTLE Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. Although she lived in the United States for most of her life, she now lives on Vancouver Island.
by Jennifer Jean
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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the whole interview’s about her girl.
D says, I wanted her to know
but know my way,
not at school or from some jerk.
So one day I say, “We should talk,” & she’s freaked.
We sit down in the kitchen &
she starts crying. (So I’m thinking, She knows…)
“You got Cancer!
You got Cancer!” she starts screaming.
D snorts, We laugh about it now.
How she was so relieved
I wasn’t
dying.
*
Others in town talk
about D’s son
finding her nude online, or
fellow yacht-clubbers finding her & showing him
her webcam antics, her customer ratings
on her “Escort” ads.
My son was bound,
says D,
to notice
my overnight bag. I stuffed it
with lingerie.
I mean—
jeez…
she shrugs.
There’s a bit of dead
air for the boy, then
he’s gone
from the interview.
*
D scans the Starbucks
where we perch on stools. Says she’s failed
the bar exam a lot, her ex is a nerd, that she wants another degree
& to write a memoir,
But I’m so exhausted!
Then it’s back to her girl, When I take my girl
on errands, I point out
all the jerks in town who’re clients &
we laugh. An orgasm
is like a pedicure for these guys.
I mean—jeez…
Who does that?
she shakes out her long, frosted hair. She’s fifty-three
so she’s got some grey
but it looks classy.
I wonder if she’ll start pointing.
*
Instead, D looks back at me, One time we saw
this big ass politico I’ve known for years
slurping pancakes with his wife, at IHOP.
She says his name
& I’m ready to stop the recorder.
Too funny, she sighs. She’s so
far away she squints
at me, says, My girl’s cool. I nod.
We talk about all our guys.
It’s all good.
*
Just wish there wasn’t
side effects.
She leans away but we’re closer now—like mother,
like daughter. & the monied men in Starbucks seem to be
closing in as the place crowds, but
I’m hooked. Side effects?
I feel nothing. Like that song!
After nine years of this, she sings, I feel nothing
nothing nothing at all…
______________________________________________________________________
Jennifer Jean's poetry collections are VOZ, The Fool, and Object Lesson, which explores sex-trafficking and objectification in America. She's also released the teaching resource Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry. Her poetry, prose, and co-translations have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Rattle, The Common, On the Seawall, The Los Angeles Review, and as an Academy of American Poets “Poem-a-Day.” She's been awarded fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Disquiet/Dzanc Books, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Kolkata International Poetry Festival; as well, she received an Ambassador for Peace Award from the Women's Federation for World Peace. Jennifer is the senior program manager of 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center's online writing program.
by Megan Leonard
by Michele Karas
I would embrace you today but your body is haylage
low sugar meadow late cut from slow rolling hills
sweet grass shorn close every year down to clover
down to root into mineral-rich loam now your home
home also the centerpiece pond plated with silver
fish scales around whose radiance we hiked marveled
at the rising moon all those Aprils ago do you remember
I would embrace you today but your body is breath
hot in the nostrils of a sorrel mare fecund with foal
with ferment of alfalfa of bat guano frass of honeybees
my sister today I am alone and so Ered of grief ache
instead to spread wide my wings take in the essence
of everything loud jazz notes of geese praise be to
the enigma of their homing which is all that departs
comes back just as sure as we will never be parted
for on this day I have braided you a nest marker
from the long reeds of my missing so that we may
embrace with my arms which are your arms my body
your easter as much a part of me now as the mineral
and mare’s breath the heartbeat in my neck all your
life left unlived oh sister beloved sister
______________________________________________________________________
Michele Karas holds an MFA in creative writing from CUNY: The City College of New York. A Community of Writers poetry contributor, her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Tab Journal, Rogue Agent, Midwestern Review, Narrative, Thrush, and elsewhere. Originally from San Diego, Michele now makes her home in New York's beautiful Hudson Valley.
By Amanda Maret Scharf and Hannah Smith
In twenty years, we’re going to run out
of spaces for new residents. The bright light surveilled the parking lot
that once housed water. When I was young, I used to climb to the top
of the tower just to see past a tall building. It was a novelty to feel, against
my back, the weight of a wave contained, trapped in pre-stressed concrete.
From the sky, it must have seemed like I was thirsty, but in reality
I was bloated and fucked. Who wasn’t? Filled with a need
for liquid treasure and a garden that blooms year round. The only green
space in this city was a vertical lawn, a rising wall capitalizing
on the human desire for natural growth. It was a fantasy,
an upturned gaze into the clouds. Hot air rose
from the street grate, late summer sewage, a threshold
I could not pass.
______________________________________________________________________
Amanda Maret Scharf is a poet from Los Angeles. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry at Ohio State University where she served as Poetry Editor for The Journal.
Hannah Smith is a writer from Dallas, Texas. She received an MFA in poetry at the Ohio State University, where she served as the Managing Editor of The Journal. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere.
by Janet Jennings
after Paisley Rekdal
No green bean girl. No limber cucumber.
I’m ample-angled. A gamble in bangles.
Madrigal in a cramped catsuit made
indelible. I’m fractal, flammable,
a fabular handful of arpeggios.
Cupid still visits me. I’m emblem
and actual, sequined, chromatic.
I dance a red fandango into embers.
I’m a naughty old bag, a wild
December. Keep your bowler on.
I’m Jupiter’s daughter, a triple moon
Dame in low-heeled sandals.
Heft the Prosecco. Light a candle.
I’ve still got a scandal left in me.
______________________________________________________________________
Janet Jennings’ poetry and flash fiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, Shenandoah, and Verse Daily, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, Traces in Water. For twenty years she owned and ran Sunspire, a natural foods company. Janet lives in San Anselmo, California, with her husband and twin daughters.
by Maureen Thorson
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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The cuckoo is a trash bird.
It puts its eggs in other birds’ nests
and peaces out, like, whatever.
Cuckoo does what it wants,
which is eat all your fruit
then get up in a clock
and make out with the gears.
You pretend not to care but it hurts.
And while you cry in the bathroom,
cuckoo “borrows” your car
doesn’t come home till dawn
smelling like weed
with a long scratch on the hood.
Your friends don’t come around now,
your mom cut you off
cause you spent the money
she gave you for rent
to feed him, but they don’t see
how huge and fat and
hungry hungry hungry cuckoo is how soft
how big his eyes, shiny with tears
how he needs you
and so you say okay, even
though cuckoo’s big body crumples
your furniture, squeezes you
cramps you until your breath is shallow
and so you keep double-time hoofing it
to love this swollen baby in your nest.
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Maureen Thorson is author of three collections of poetry: Share the Wealth (Veliz Books 2022), My Resignation (Shearsman Books 2014), and Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011). Her collection of lyric essays, On Dreams, is newly out from Bloof Books. She lives in Falmouth, Maine. Visit her at maureenthorson.com.
by Catherine Broadwall
by Susan Milchman
(a golden shovel after INXS)
We are all secretly in love with the scent of a storm coming. the awakening of an unknown. Your
absence casts a haunt that holds me like a knife. / Every wounded beast knows / the herd moves
away from the injured / in an untraceable moment / in a silent tear down the middle. / You are
the dark corner my body belongs to. / I am the wound that waits patiently for blood to arrive / so
I wait / knowing my lineage will arrive like a sea storm. deep from my watershed. urgent & raw.
______________________________________________________________________
Susan Milchman’s poetry has appeared in The Journal, Stirring, Sweet Tree Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, SWWIM Every Day, Rust+Moth, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She has poetry in the anthologies Bramble & Thorn, 2017 and haunted, 2022 (Porkbelly Press); forthcoming work can be found in the anthology, FINAL GIRL (Porkbelly Press, 2024). Susan’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and her published work can be found at susanmilchman.com.
by Melanie McCabe
Once I walked out into the world with flesh on, cluster
pins of nerves arranged artfully. If you had exhaled
against my shoulder or the back of my knee,
you might have watched me bloom. I weighed down
the darkening like honeysuckle or stones plinked
into pockets. I leaned hard against twilight
to leave a print of myself for you to find.
How very like a small girl to leave so many
finger smudges, my palms upturned for a wet cloth,
a murmur that wipes them clean. How very like
a ghost to tell you, here, this is my hand, and then
to pull it away. I was both and more. As fast
as I could fold, there were more paper boats to let
loose on the air. And yes, of course, I see
the flaw in that logic. I tilted my head, opened my
mouth to the breeze because I remembered kisses.
That kind of faith should have been rewarded, ought
to have made the lame lift up their pallets and stand
steady in their high heels, but instead I rolled on
my tongue no more than a whit of wind. It was a trick
to balance it there so long without swallowing.
I walked out into the world with eyes on. If you
had draped your shadow across them, I would still
have seen that it wasn’t you. You were like that, making
night blacker than it was ever intended to be. I blinked,
not to clear my sight, but to make you feel the stroke
of my lashes down your skin. You shuddered; you
were legion. I would have settled for any one of you.
______________________________________________________________________
Melanie McCabe is the author of three collections of poems: The Nights Divers (Terrapin Books, 2022), What The Neighbors Know (FutureCycle Press, 2014), and History of the Body (David Robert Books, 2012). Her memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams, won the University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, and a feature article about it appeared in The Washington Post in December of 2017.
by Cathlin Noonan
by Ashley Elizabeth
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
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My father does not believe women
who say they have been raped
He asks questions like
why and how and why now
as if assault on their bodies is merely an inconvenience
as if their bodies do not rot on their own with each passing second.
They do not need help feeling less than.
He asks why I am so affected
by the orange man in office with the tiny hands
and other men stepping down from positions of power.
I do not have the heart to tell him my brother
did not always keep his hands to himself.
______________________________________________________________________
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated writer and teacher from Baltimore, MD. Her poetry has appeared in OutWrite, Voicemail Poems, and Stanchion, among others. She is the author of chapbooks, you were supposed to be a friend (Nightingale & Sparrow, 2020) and black has every right to be angry (Alternating Current Press). Ashley's debut collection, A Family Thing, is forthcoming from Redacted Books/ELJ Editions (August 2024). When Ashley isn't teaching or working as the Chapbook Editor with Sundress Publications, she habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet). She lives with her partner and their cats.
by Susan Blackwell Ramsey
I didn’t love him. He was sweet,
teasing letters all winter long.
Flirtation is a fragile art.
Some loss is casual, some cuts deep.
Horns don’t fall off, antlers do,
a tusk means something had to die.
He brought me back an ivory mask
three inches high, with spiral horns,
almond eyes, a pointed chin.
He was very proud he knew
how to recognize a fake,
how to tell bone from ivory.
All he had to do was take
his lighter out, for bone will burn.
What’s true survives a feeble flame,
something I had yet to learn.
As my mother puzzled how
to string it from a cord it slipped
and snapped one horn off, a clean break,
nothing that she couldn’t glue.
And while the epoxy set
it slipped, and the other snapped off, too.
She felt terrible. I did not
mind very much, which was my clue.
I’m sure he wouldn’t buy it now.
Regret saves nothing. Elephants
are matriarchal, mourn their dead.
Their great slow hearts weigh fifty pounds.
And when I hold this in my hand
I miss my mother, not that man.
______________________________________________________________________
Susan Blackwell Ramsey's work has appeared, among other places, in The Southern Review, 32 Poems, Smartish Pace, and Best American Poetry; her book, A Mind Like This, won the Prairie Schooner Poetry Book Prize. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which actually does exist.
by Carolene Kurien