Your limbless body winging down the side- walk. Ess, ess, ess. A stutter, a slow leak, a hiss. A thread following an invisible needle stitching a quick hem in the air. Frantic to find an escape under the fence, you bunch up against the boards like ribbon candy or a flamenco ruffle—com- pressed esses on esses. When I was six, we called your like grass snakes, nearly as common as the blades your kin zipped between, green- &-black lightning parting the grass as they passed. The chase was as thrilling as the capture, the ropy creature slipping through my fingers, one hand to the next as I attempted to detain it— slipping like the chain of a luxurious necklace, silky and supple. Look!, I say, pointing you out to my dog, wanting someone with whom to share my wonderment. The dog brings her nose to the pile you’ve made of yourself beside the fence, just as you begin to unfold, loop after loop, and glide beneath a ragged plank. The dog jumps backward then, surprised to find that something alive could flow like water.
Yvonne Zipter is author of the poetry collections The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets, Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal (Lambda Literary Award Finalist), and Like Some Bookie God, as well as the Russian historical novel Infraction and the nonfiction books Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet. Her individual published poems are being sold in two repurposed toy-vending machines in Chicago, the proceeds of which support a local nonprofit organization.
SWWIM keeps on growing! We’re proud to introduce our newest Contributing Editor-at-Large, Kai Coggin! The inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs and author of four collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021), Kai (she/her) is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE grant fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021— awarded in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, Entropy, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Writing Guild. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. Please join us in welcoming her!
We joined Bluesky! Find us at @swwim.bsky.social.
11/8 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray / 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
11/8 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray and local poet Judy Ireland / 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
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My eyes followed this poem down, literally gliding along with it. Capturing the moments of subtle motion - I loved it!
This is a delightful poem by Yvonne Zipter! It captures the mobility of a snake in surprising new ways.