When the Irises Don't Come

By Kyle Potvin

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It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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I have survived the darts of winter icing my face
and scrubbed mud from the carpet all spring.
 
I have rejoiced at the sky turned bowl-like and blue
and studied the family of fox living beneath our forsythia.
And yet you do not appear, as you always do,
your purple palms upraised.
 
The spectacle of fireworks does not entice you,
nor the young blueberries about to burst
from their tight pods.
 
The tall stalks swish a strange summons,
first casual, then insistent. Still,
you do not come.
 
I can't explain this sadness.
 
All I know is that since I came to this place,
I have relied on you to open, so that each July, 
I can place your stems in the guest room
for my mother, who, ill and slowing,
has yet to tell me if she will arrive.

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Kyle Potvin’s full-length poetry collection is Loosen (Hobblebush Books, 2021). Her chapbook, Sound Travels on Water, won the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award, and her poem “After the Biopsy” won The Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry 2024—Sonnet Award. Kyle’s poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Ecotone, SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily, and The New York Times. She is a peer reviewer for Whale Road Review. 

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• 04/10 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Chloe Martinez and local poet Ximena Gómez / The BBar at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free

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