Bird

By Erin Wilson

---

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

---

My mother did not bear me to metaphysical platitudes.
She pushed me out like a package through her purple crucifix,
her luxurious black fur a bramble at earth's door.
 
I spend my years recycling energy through this flesh flap.
 
And yet somewhere in the branches of the greenish-white sycamore
that grows stubbornly from the crescent of my mind, sings a bird.

---

---

Erin Wilson's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Manhattan Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Bear Review, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, Lake Effect, Verse Daily, Pembroke, and elsewhere internationally. Her first collection is At Home with Disquiet; her second, Blue (whose title poem won a Pushcart), is about depression, grief, and the transformative power of art. She lives in a small town on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory, in Northern Ontario, Canada, the traditional lands of the Anishnawbek, devoted to a handful of things, all of them poetry. Some of her best friends are trees. She refuses to carry a cell phone.

---

• 02/13 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Alafia Sessions + local writer Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello / The BBar at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free

• SWWIM Every Day is now accepting poetry translations for publication consideration. Please see swwim.org/submit for the full guidelines.

• Are you a SWWIMmer with literary news to share (publication/feature/award/book/book review)? We’d love to shout out your accomplishments in our Weekly Spotlight! Please email swwimmiami@gmail.com with a link to your news. (No DMs on any social media platforms, please.)

• Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Bluesky for more updates—and visit our website to see past, present, and future readings & events.

---

**We do our best to preserve the integrity of each poem; however, due to programming limitations, some poems may read differently on a mobile phone and in certain browsers. For best viewing, use Chrome on a desktop/laptop.