SWWIM WITH US ON GIVE MIAMI DAY...

by SWWIM Every Day

… and, Dear Substack Community, we can bring you more poems like this one from the United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón, which was first published by us before it was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2019:

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Cannibal Woman


I’m looking for the right words, but all I can think of is: 
           parachute or ice water. 
 
There’s nothing, but this sailboat inside me, slowly trying to catch 
a wind, maybe there’s an old man on it, maybe a small child, 
 
all I know is they’d like to go somewhere. They’d like to see the sail 
 
straighten go tense and take them some place. But instead they wait,
a little tender wave comes and leaves them 
           right where they were all along. 
 
How did this happen? No wind I can conjure anymore. 
 
My father told me the story of a woman larger than a mountain,
who crushed redwoods with her feet, who could swim a whole lake
 
in two strokes—she ate human flesh and terrorized the people. 
 
I loved that story. She was bigger than any monster, or Bigfoot, 
           or Loch Ness creature—
 
a woman who was like weather, as enormous as a storm. 
 
He’d tell me how she walked through the woods, each tree 
coming down, branch to sawdust, leaf to skeleton, each mountain 
           pulverized to dust. 
 
Then, they set a trap. A hole so deep she could not climb out of it. 
 
           (I have known that trap.) 
 
Then, people set her on fire with torches. So she could not eat them
anymore, could not steal their children or ruin their trees. 
 
I liked this part too. The fire. I imagined how it burned her mouth, 
her skin, and how she tried to stand but couldn’t, how it almost felt
 
good to her—as if something was finally meeting her desire with desire. 
 
The part I didn’t like was the end, how each ash that flew up in the night 
           became a mosquito, how she is still all around us 
in the dark, multiplied. 
 
I’ve worried my whole life that my father told me this because 
she is my anger: first comes this hunger, then abyss, then fire, 
 
and then a nearly invisible fly made of ash goes on and on eating mouthful 
 
           after mouthful of those I love.

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This year, for the first time, SWWIM is participating in Give Miami Day, one of the largest annual giving events in the nation. Thank you to those who have already donated—we are astounded by your generosity! But we still have a long way to go to match our challenge grant of $5,000.

As many of you know, SWWIM is run by a grassroots, all-volunteer staff, from its co-founders to its staff readers to its social media director. Every dollar we receive goes right back into the organization. Funding will help us to remove barriers to access--like the small submission fees we currently charge at SWWIM Every Day and travel costs associated with our residency at The Betsy Hotel on South Beach--for poets from a diverse array of backgrounds. And, of course, someday soon, we would love to be able to pay our writers. 

That’s because, despite our name (Supporting Women Writers in Miami) and our love for this city by the sea, we serve a global literary community. And we’d like nothing more than to help more of you get here to experience the wonder that is the Magic City.

If your situation allows, we would be extremely thankful if you'd consider donating to help fund our programming. (To that end, see what we’ve accomplished so far in the graphic below.) 

No gift is too small; every dollar we receive moves us closer to our goal of $5,000.00. Early giving started on Monday, November 13, and continues through Give Miami Day on Thursday, November 16th. So please, if you can, consider a gift to help us SWWIM strong into a bigger and brighter future.

With So Much Gratitude,

The SWWIM Team