He watches his wife push open the door of the campground bathroom, take a step in, check to make sure someone isn’t hiding in the single stall. The maneuver takes all of three seconds, but the hesitation is at odds with her vigor on the trail. When he asks, she says she hardly thinks of it—most women do some variation of the same thing, or at least it crosses their minds, to be ready. Decades married, he’s only just noticing this vigilance— unspoken, subterranean, intuitive. The door swings shut with a thud, startling a barn swallow who nests above it every spring. The bird swoops out from under the overhang, up again to perch on a branch until it’s safe to return. How many times a day does she do this? He remembers another bird he saw once, nesting on a restaurant’s outdoor fire alarm— the curve of her taupe feathers, dry thatch of twigs a surprise, so jarring atop the flame- red box. He wonders what it is with these birds, why they don’t find somewhere safer.
Brett Warren (she/her) is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, ONE ART, Rise Up Review, and elsewhere. A triple poetry nominee for Best of the Net 2024, she lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. See brettwarrenpoetry.com.
4/10 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
4/10 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Tyler Mills + local writer Jennifer Litt / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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. (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.
those last lines 😭
Blindness to the vigilance of others is such an important observation and so beautifully captured!!