It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
“ … Whatever mistakes we make, we will become what we are because of our blunders.” Dorianne Laux “Zulu, Indiana (An Ode to the Internet)” O stirrup pants, o acid-washed jeans, o single black lace glove and rubber bracelets. Forgive me, but you were mistakes, all of you, you and the thigh-ripped-open jeans I criss-crossed with skate laces. O big hair, o green eye shadow, o hanging out on the beach drinking ill-gotten Bartles & Jaymes and letting JP of the fake ID unlace me and feed me vodka-spiked watermelon and slide his fingers inside me. O dark parking lot, o end of the lane. O you missteps, you well-practiced mistakes, you paving of my crooked road. Fender-bender in the McDonald’s parking lot on the way home from Great America because I was too impatient to wipe the steam from the back window. The ride I hitched with those guys who turned out to be high and on shore leave. O narrow escapes. That haircut sophomore year. That blue prom dress. Jellies. Not going to Homecoming with G because nice guys scared me more than JP and his Alabama Slammers. O grapefruit diet, o Jane Fonda’s Workout, o beginning of erasure. Daisy Dukes and ankle boots, D+ in calculus, girl sitting in the back row chewing her hair. O child, o paving stone, o boat somebody else rowed. Off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, “Let’s Get Physical,” o parachute pants— the kind that were so easy to slip out of.
Jennifer Saunders (she/her) is the author of Self-Portrait with Housewife (Tebot Bach, 2019), winner of the Clockwise Chapbook Competition. Her poem “Crosswalk” was selected by Kim Addonizio as the winner of the 2020 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize and appeared in Southword. Jennifer's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Grist, Ninth Letter, Pidgeonholes, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She is also the co-editor of Stained: an anthology of writing about menstruation (Querencia Press, 2023). Jennifer holds an MFA from Pacific University and lives in German-speaking Switzerland.
9/6 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Felicia Zamora / 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
9/6 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Felicia Zamora and local poet Lolita Stewart-White / 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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Wow! Every line of this rings so true, but I particularly love the lines:
"O you missteps, you well-practiced mistakes,
you paving of my crooked road."
Beautifully done, Jennifer Saunders!
Ugh. It's so good!!