Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s National Poetry Month project: Sing the Body: A Collection of Poems Praising Our Selves!
With support from Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) and Florida International University’s Center for Women and Gender Studies, we are publishing poems that celebrate body positivity and our selves.
In addition to publishing the poems as poems of the day, 10 select Sing the Body poems will be displayed on FIU’s main campus near mirrors and places where women encounter themselves. These poems will live in a dedicated portfolio on our website.
Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting SWWIM Every Day! Happy National Poetry Month!
The baby imprints her face to your face forehead to forehead, mouth to mouth, blowing raspberries on any soft part of you. Embrace fleshiness thick legs strong. Carry the four-year-old on your back, the one-year-old on your hip. Your arms surround these children who press themselves into your body. Boundless love, a great acceptance of you as you are right now: disheveled, mussed, tired, unsung in any circle but this one.
Lara Payne lives in Maryland. Once an archeologist, she now teaches writing at the college level, to veterans, and to small children. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner in the Moving Words Competition and was placed on buses in Arlington, VA. Recent poems have appeared in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Mom Egg Review.
**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.