Coming soon!
Author: awhitetrashpoet
writer.
NEW RELEASES!!!
Our first official releases since our relaunch are now available for direct purchase with the authors and editors, and at select bookstores across California! IN ADDITION, You can get Honeysuckle and Nightshade by Brennan Defrisco here, and you can get Reflections: Mirrors to the Queer Experience by email order ONLY redwoodreflections@gmail.com, as they are a limited edition with less than 200 available copies. There will be a ton of more information coming soon, THANK Y’ALL FOR YOUR PATIENCE!!!!!
NEW RELEASES!!!
Our first official releases since our relaunch are now available for direct purchase with the authors and editors, and at select bookstores across California! IN ADDITION, You can get Honeysuckle and Nightshade by Brennan Defrisco here, and you can get Reflections: Mirrors to the Queer Experience by email order ONLY redwoodreflections@gmail.com, as they are a limited edition with less than 200 available copies. There will be a ton of more information coming soon, THANK Y’ALL FOR YOUR PATIENCE!!!!!
Redwood Poetry Festival
Happy New Year from Swimming with Elephants
After much contemplation and reflection, Swimming with Elephants Publications has made the decision to close its doors for the year of 2021.
We will be taking a hiatus to reflect on our goals and presence in the community and decide, over the next year, if there is still a place for SwEP in our ever changing world. We hope this time off will provide the opportunity for us to decide whether are best course of action is to recuperate, or if it is time for us to go gentle into that goodnight.
We at SwEP have been incredibly grateful for the support and encouragement of our community over the past several years. The opportunity to work with such a vast selection of poets and artists across the United States and beyond has been more than any small press could aspire to achieve. We are grateful to have been able to represent new and emerging voices, as well as provide awareness to various social issues and public concerns through topical anthologies.
All our publications are still available at this time through Independent Bookstores, like Bookworks Albuquerque, as well as the major distribution centers. If it becomes clear that it is not possible resume our business, these publications will go out of print at the end of 2021.
If you are published with Swimming with Elephants Publications, you can expect your annual statement within the next two weeks which will include more information regarding the break and options concerning your publication.
Much love, respect, and gratitude to everyone who has helped us become and maintain the small presence we have. Please remain safe and compassionate to each other during these trying times.
News: Wrapping Up 2020
In is no secret that this has been a difficult year for our small press. We have struggled over the last several months to complete the contracts from the beginning of the year, and are happy to say with the publication of Unlocked Poetry, we have fulfilled our obligations.
Now that we are caught up with all of our outstanding projects, we will be suspending our publications for the undeterminable future. We have already canceled our Weekly Write and this year’s Open Call for Poetry Chapbooks. I would very much like to say we will be back next year, but I am hesitant to make any promises at the time being.
If you are one of our authors, we want to remind you that according to your contract you retain all the rights to your work and if you choose to take work previously published by Swimming with Elephants Publications and publish it elsewhere, we will wish you the very best of luck in your endeavor. If you are interested in retiring your publication from SwEP to seek publication elsewhere, please send us an email and we can conclude the production of your work. I assure you, there will be no hard feelings on our end.
As I have previously stated, the publication of chapbooks is a luxury and not a priority in the world we are currently trying to navigate. I would much rather put the press to rest than attempt to conjure new publications that of a lower quality and/or are not meeting the needs of our authors and community.
We will know early in 2021 if our doors will be shut for good and what the outlook will be.
Currently, all our publications are still for sale through the major book distributors, but as always, we encourage readers to seek their purchases from independent bookstores or from the authors themselves.
We continue our affiliation with Bookworks Albuquerque and encourage our readers to purchase our latest releases through Bookworks or other independent Bookstores.
Find our complete catalog here: https://swimmingwithelephants.com/catalog-by-author/
Be safe and be well!
Aaron Ambrose
Aaron Ambrose is a white, disabled, trans femme poet, herbalist and artist. A step-parent, a pretty good cook and tends to know a little bit about a lot of things. They’ve produced numerous chapbooks, performed at all kinds of events, moved a million times, started a million gardens and raised sheep, goats, llamas and chickens. Their cultural and political work is most always something to do with keeping poor and disabled lives at the front and center. As a survivor and former sex worker their low class, home-sick, scorpio heart is forever with the ones that are never in the room.
Order from Bookworks
Swimming with Elephants Publications always encourages our audience to purchase books from independent books stores and author sales.
Our official independent bookstore affiliate is Bookworks Albuquerque, and we encourage purchases through their website to people all over the United States of America.
You can now order our most recent release, Worn Out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose, from Bookworks Albuquerque. Click here to order today!
Weekly Write: “Truth Climbs Out of My Throat to Shame My Abusers” by Auden Eagerton
Truth Climbs Out of My Throat to Shame My Abusers
When she emerges, she is not a beautiful thing,
drenched in a vernix of saliva,
breathless, trembling.
It has taken years to knife herself up my esophagus,
blazing her name red into each rib passed.
A tempestuous, heaving mass birthed into cupped hands,
a reckoning, and did you know,
I placed her amidst the cedar of my childhood home,
let her catch.
And still not as simple as that.
Every time I speak I decide
whether to keep her loaded on my tongue or rage,
because part of her is that I still speak to my father.
Part of her is that my father never reads my poems,
or if he does, sweeps them into the compost
for the worms to read, with the tomato peelings
and blood and how my mother helped us
hide purple omens from his belt, called that love.
How a girl I was seeing hit me fifteen years later
and I remembered that first time, knew now
it was in my hands to make sure hers never touched me again.
What a nice thought,
that I can save my childhood self
with a better cape tied around my shoulders.
Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English, as well as a minor in Film Studies, at Kennesaw State University. Their interests lie heavily in studying American literature and poetry. In addition to publishing their own poetry, Eagerton aims to one day become an editor for a literary magazine and be involved in both sides of the publishing process. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, and Kudzu.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Now Available: Worn Out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose
We would like to announce the release of Worn Out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose.
Coming Soon: Worn Out Gorgeous
Coming Soon:
Worn Out Gorgeous
by Aaron Ambrose
We would like to announce the upcoming release of Worn Out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose, the second of three chapbooks which were chosen for publication from our 2020 Chapbook Open Call. Originally scheduled for release in June, the pandemic has pushed our release date to October, 2020.
Follow our website and Facebook page for upcoming release and performance information.
An additional note to our followers:
The ability to publish is a luxury which should not be the top priority of our society at the moment, and it has not been the top priority for our staff. However, we have every intention of fulfilling the contracts we made before the pandemic.
Due to the pandemic we have postponed this year’s Open Call for chapbooks and the Weekly Write. After the new year, in 2021, we will reevaluate our business model and decide on our next steps.
Although we have no idea what the future holds for our small press, we have our fingers crossed that we will survive this difficult time and come out on the other side but it is far too soon to know what we will look like in the next year.
We still have one more chapbook from last year’s Open Call which we hope to release before the end of 2020 and are hoping to still be able put together our 2020 anthology. We have extended our timeline for these publications and we appreciate the patience of our followers and poets.
You can continue to support us by supporting our poets and supporting independent bookstores.
Weekly Write: “The Squall, Soon” by Zachary Kluckman
The Squall, Soon
I claim the rain as my father.
Who hung its wet form more often in my door
than the man whose DNA wrote the map of my palms.
This body is almost entirely water.
My fingerprints are his, a sand garden
raked by the waves of his movement, by the presence
of tides, anchored to bone as hollow as his name,
whispered in storms. His face was built of screen doors,
easier to witness the world through his rust than see
the man. For years I believed the shriek of hinge
was my name. Named after him, the sound of doors
closing. The sound of absence. Our grass always was
eager for blood. And the rain, eager to sing the skin clean,
pulled the torn skin aside when I fell, open to inspection
by insects, I watched the water pool in the bowl of my wound,
listened to crickets divorce the dark with their legs.
Explosion is common with new birth. The wet
taught me mud, taught me womb, before fathers,
before abandoned, born with the knowledge of water.
We way we slide within our skin, barely contained.
The way teeth form a seawall, to contain our drowning.
Each storm brings the scars to the surface, my feet
to the door, eager to meet the sky halfway through its fall,
a child running to introduce himself to his father.
Weekly Write: “Kore” by Lizzie Waltner
Kore
She wears flowers.
Let’s them twist around her,
crown, ankles, wrists,
shackles. Daisies fold
in her mouth. Lilies
pulling against vocal cords.
She pretends they are heavy,
wants to sink. To let the river
Styx swallow her whole.
Sometimes, she feels more
at home when she’s drowning.
The sunlight burns her Spring
freckled cheeks – roses
aren’t supposed to wilt
in the Summer.
So, she lets herself Fall.
Be comforted in the tones
of wandering souls and
Cerberus’s howls. They are
symphony. She finds comfort
in the God that does not
pass judgement. The one that
merely watches from a throne
of ebony with the touch
of Winter.
Lizzie Waltner grew up in Rio Rancho, NM, attended ENMU for her BS in Journalism, and then completed her MA in Creative writing at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. She is now working as a teacher intern.
COVID Updates and Hard Choices
New Releases
Due to COVID in the United States, our production has slowed tremendously. Whereas last year we had almost 17 publications by this time, we are now only presenting our fourth completed collection.
“A Duet of Dying is a poignant and honest approach to surviving terminal sickness, living disabled, and the constant navigation of the healthcare system of the United States. From honest confessions like remaining with somebody caught cheating “Because I was on his health insurance,” in Why Did You Stay? part 3, to the foreign and familiar feeling of not knowing yourself apart from the “alien” in Pathogen, this collection is a special one for its approach through — and more aptly: with — sickness. Then there is the raw cruelty that is given a voice so aptly in Ringtones into Dirges; here, at last, are words for the battle with collections calls for MRIs and diagnostic tests; those which are necessary to life, but the collected debt of which could easily drive somebody to death. And I think, finally, finally, here is an honest testament — of love, of life (while actively dying), of death (and still living). And wonderfully, a narrative from two powerful queer voices, who offer this bittersweet collection, so purely.”
~Reviewed by Maxine Peseke
As always, we encourage ordering the collection from the authors personally or through an independent bookstore, but the collection is also available through Amazon and other distributors.
About the Authors
Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer poet, photographer, barista, and bartender living in Seattle, WA with their chosen family and a couple very soft cats. They sit on the board of Rain City Poetry Slam and consistently host weekly poetry shows.
Erin Schick (they/them) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled social worker living in upstate New York and focused on disability justice and queer liberation. Their interests include the Pacific Northwest, women’s soccer, and sled dogs.
Coming Soon
Before the end of the year we have two more books scheduled for release: Worn out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose and Double-Knotted Shoelace by Trixi Rosa. We are also working on putting together an anthology called Unlocked Poetry from the Lyrical Vagabonds in Denver. Hopefully, we will still be able to create our annual anthology, but we won’t know the details until December.
Effects of COVID 19
Since the beginning of the COVID situation in the United States our office has been closed which means all work for the press is being done via my home computer. My outdated, slow, simple home computer. This has already lead to many unforeseen troubles with formatting of the books we are currently producing.
Not only has the production time has slowed tremendously and we have had to switch back to a print on demand service after the closing of the local printer we only recently acquired. We are still committed to putting out quality publications but our ability to produce publications the way we want has changed greatly.
Because of this, we are postponing our annual Open Call for Chapbooks this year, and possibly our Weekly Write series. This is not a decision I have come to easily, but I do believe it is the right decision at this time. I would much rather slow down and survive, than push through and burn out.
What’s to Come
The ability to publish is a luxury which should not be the top priority of our society at the moment, but we do believe we will return to a place where a small press like ours has a purpose and a future.
Although we have no idea what the future holds for our small press, we have our fingers crossed that we will survive this difficult time and come out on the other side better than before.
You can continue to support us by supporting our poets and supporting independent bookstores.
Weekly Write: “Reflections” by Maxine Peseke
Reflections
I saw you this morning
slightly hurried,
one eyebrow groomed in
a somewhat socially acceptable
arch
Excusing the other with murmurs of reassurance —
“Sisters, not twins”
you left with a smear
of toothpaste
on the corner of your lip
When I saw you saw, frazzled,
in the afternoon,
toothpaste was replaced
with a crumb from whatever
mediocre lunch you fed yourself —
sloppily
but you’re only human
though it’s safe to say
the toothpaste
was a cleaner look
Regardless, you should eat more, dear.
But keep going —
I’ll send you packing
with a snack in your purse.
When you arrived home,
your eyes looked drawn;
a corner of your prided eyeliner
had streaked from some absent
midday eye rub
and really,
I thought this morning,
you should get more sleep.
But I smiled when the mirror
fogged up with steam —
you probably didn’t see —
and you wiped your face
Clean.
Maxine L. Peseke is a writer, mother, and sometimes freelance editor; she also works closely with Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC, as an organizational assistant. She is currently living in a small Northern Ontario town, transplanted from New Mexico respectively where she originally met each of Saturday’s Sirens as part of the Albuquerque poetry community.
Kat Heatherington to Feature at Mindwell Poetry September 18
Kat Heatherington is the featured guest at an upcoming poetry reading, and we would like to invite you to attend!
Please read the following invitation from Kat to learn how to attend and get a copy of The Heart is a Muscle:
Mindwell Poetry’s The Poet Speaks series will be held over Zoom on Friday, September 18th, at 7pm – so you can attend from anywhere in the world. There’s an open mic, and then the host will briefly interview me , and then I’ll read from my new book, The Heart is a Muscle, which came out in March – and for which this is the first feature-length reading I’ve done, given how this year has turned out. 🙂
I’m really looking forward to sharing this work with you, and I’d love to see you there!
Event details are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/315470969761143/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/315470969761143/> and the Zoom link
will be available from there as well, a little closer to the date. Even if you are not on facebook, this page should be accessible.
If you haven’t picked up your copy of the book yet, they’re available directly from me, as well as at Harvest Moon Books, https://harvestmoonbooks.com/category=Poetry<https://harvestmoonbooks.com/?category=Poetry>, and Amazon, along with my first book, The Bones of This Land.
And if you enjoy my work and would be interested in receiving poetry in your inbox a couple times a month, check out my Patreon page! Patreon has been a source of deep delight in this difficult year. For as little as $1/month you will receive brand-new and unpublished poems in your
inbox, or for $5/month, you can have a handwritten postcard poem mailed
to you. Both the postcard photo and the poem are my original work.
https://patreon.com/yarrowkat <https://patreon.com/yarrowkat>
I hope to see you on the 18th!
Weekly Write: “Cuba, NM Homestead” by Rene Mullen
Cuba, NM Homestead
Among dusty mustard sandstone cliffs
fragrant crusted sage
crumbling remnants
of once beloved hearth
now a wisp of memory
melting away with every rare
but torrential teardrop monsoon
In sunset shadows
each individual wall foundation stone
tells what little story
geriatric minds can muster
only to be ignored by deaf ears
of its brethren
Their only neighbor
next room over at
Ponderosa Acres
twisted skeleton juniper husk
whose bark stopped biting
before the house
gave up being home
Rene Mullen is managing editor for a PR firm in Albuquerque. A performance and traditional poet, and a mental health advocate, he is one of two 2018 Albuquerque Slam Champions. He has been a member of four poetry slam teams representing New Mexico, and has appeared on multiple regional and national stages. His poetry has been featured in Poetry Quarterly, 50 Haikus, and is author of This Still Breathing Canvas, a collection of poetry.
The long Amazon link is https://www.amazon.com/This-Still-Breathing-Canvas-Mullen/dp/B08DSX3DD2/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rene+mullen+this+still+breathing+canvas&qid=1598919217&sr=8-1
Weekly Write: “edges burn more readily than centers” by kat heatherington
edges burn more readily than centers
edges burn more readily than centers.
setting an edge alight is a simple matter,
though putting it out again may not be,
if it is inclined towards fire.
the center doesn’t light so well
unless you reach it through the edge,
take the slow route in, open its defenses.
only water will put the center out, once alight.
anything else just picks up the blaze,
amplifies, and burns.
you came pretty close to the center,
smoldering your way in from my furthest edge,
taking a lazy course through the perimeter,
tossing sparks, until suddenly, you had arrived
in the flammable heart,
and everything around you ignited.
surprised, you could only
watch it burn, turning in slow circles,
observing, unable
to reach your hands out toward the flame.
Click the image to order the heart is a muscle from Bookworks ABQ.
the heart is a muscle
by kat heatherington
Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque New Mexico, in Sunflower River intentional community with a varying number of other humans and cats. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has one previous book, The Bones of This Land, published in 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications and available at Bookworks and Harvest Moon Books in Albuquerque, as well as on amazon.com. She can be found online at https://patreon.com/yarrowkat and on instagram at @sometimesaparticle. You can contact the author at yarrow@sunflowerriver.org.
Weekly Write: Your Mind Tricks Won’t Work on Me, Jedi by Shanna Alden and Erin Schick
Your Mind Tricks Won’t Work on Me, Jedi
There’s a kind of music
often played by the sort of therapists
who think EMDR is a panacea for everything
or by the sorts of “doctors”
who think sticking needles into you
while you consume 5lbs of raw broccoli
will cure cancer.
Slow, beatless, meandering treble
just on the mass-produced side
of spiritual
or soothing
The kind of music some executive
with a bottom line hanging over his head
engineered from a formula
of a thousand songs
someone called “calming” once.
A cacophonic story telling the sick
and the dying that
“everything’s going to be fine”
Every time I’ve been admitted to an ER
I stare in terror
at the curtains in the trauma rooms
usually some sort of pastel gradient
just on the institutional side of
easter egg
or sunset
faded towards beige
from the industrial sorts of detergent
needed to turn a biohazard
back into a privacy screen
yellowed from iodine and vein rust
The kind of durable, stain-hiding pattern
some executive, with a bottom line hanging over his head
engineered from a thousand surveys
distilling down the 5 or 6 colours
people call “calming”.
Rows of visible barriers
between the sick or dying
and the world
a cacophony
of “everything’s going to be fine”.
A story whose moral is only denial.
But the oldest fairy tales,
don’t have happy endings.
Once upon a time,
you will die.
When you die, you will be alone.
Even if you are surrounded by loved ones,
or the arms of a person you’ll call your soulmate
until the very moment you start to fade,
and start to doubt whether souls even exist.
Even if someone dies right next to you at the very same second,
in a car crash,
or an explosion, or holding your hand,
you will still go through death alone.
Alone and dying will be the last things you ever are.
And for so many people
these curtains
are the last image
they’ll ever see.
Swinging softly in the bustle
As calming music plays over a p.a.
In a hospital with a bottom line hanging over its head,
as someone whispers in their ear,
“everything is going to be fine”
Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer poet, photographer, barista, and bartender living in Seattle, WA with their chosen family and a couple very soft cats. They sit on the board of Rain City Poetry Slam and consistently host weekly poetry shows.
Erin Schick (they/them) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled social worker living in upstate New York and focused on disability justice and queer liberation. Their interests include the Pacific Northwest, women’s soccer, and sled dogs.
Find this poem and many others in SwEP’s latest release: A Duet of Dying
Now Available!
“A Duet of Dying is a poignant and honest approach to surviving terminal sickness, living disabled, and the constant navigation of the healthcare system of the United States. From honest confessions like remaining with somebody caught cheating “Because I was on his health insurance,” in Why Did You Stay? part 3, to the foreign and familiar feeling of not knowing yourself apart from the “alien” in Pathogen, this collection is a special one for its approach through — and more aptly: with — sickness. Then there is the raw cruelty that is given a voice so aptly in Ringtones into Dirges; here, at last, are words for the battle with collections calls for MRIs and diagnostic tests; those which are necessary to life, but the collected debt of which could easily drive somebody to death. And I think, finally, finally, here is an honest testament — of love, of life (while actively dying), of death (and still living). And wonderfully, a narrative from two powerful queer voices, who offer this bittersweet collection, so purely.”
~Reviewed by Maxine Peseke
As always, we encourage ordering the collection from the authors personally or through an independent bookstore, but the collection is also available through Amazon and other distributors.
Click here to order today!
Weekly Write: “What is Precious is Never to Forget” by Bill Nevins
Publisher Note:
The team at Swimming with Elephants Publications was greatly saddened to hear of the passing of one our authors, Bob Warren. We are dedicating this week’s Weekly Write to a poem by Bill Nevins which honors him.
To learn more about Bob and his poetry, head over to: https://swimmingwithelephants.com/2019/12/18/r-b-warren/
What is Precious is Never to Forget
Eulogy or Elegy for the Living Poet, Ever Near this Poor Man’s Ear
Dear teacher Stephen Spender taught me long ago
“Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields . . .
The names of those who in their lives fought for life . . .
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.”
Soour poet of Litanies Not Adopted singed and signed the air here with his fierce honor
His love of life, of even poor Christ
Whom he saw in every parched or vibrant face he found
In this weary land, in Detroit City, and in this dry desert town.
As Donne told us the toll sounds for each however mean
SoBob preached love too would ring in us every one
If we found that buried note that stream
It might be blood of the lamb, flowing free in our deeds
It might be only buried deep in our unborn seeds
It might need be wrested forth
By words of fire, touch of light, fury, oh cold star- light.
Bob wrestled with God, he did, and surely still does,
and no holds barred.
When and where none but angels saw.
No one won. None lost. The Holy Ghost, Bob’s second, called a draw.
“Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye?”
With Blake, Bob challenged the coy deity to Be HERE Now!
I think the sky god only laughed and saw itself in the house of store among the lost,
In the mirror of Bob, son of man, and knew revelation needed no more
Knew no airy sky god need be found when Bob and such walk solid ground.
But that’s just me, agnostic mystic disrespectful American rebel son.
I would not mess with Bob nor Barbara, armed lovers ever, love in arms.
And that warning applies to the god of grief, that holy thief-
-Don’t mess. Best, just bless.
And move along, now, Daddy-O. You done your best and worst.
Bob abides. Bob never hides.
Bob may go, but Bob is here, right here. We know.
Ah won’t Detroit howl and mourn when they hear?
Ah won’t Sonny that strong hero of Motor City laugh and cry for the tall brave man called Whitey X—who knew Black Lives Matter deep in his heart and needed no one to tell him so?
And won’t this second tier rhymester raise his beer, shed a tear?
And won’t sweet Jesus smile to know that Bob is near? Always near.
Bill Nevins grew up Irish Catholic near and in New York City in the 1950’s and 60’s. He moved to northern New England and raised his three children, one of whom, Special Forces SFC Liam Nevins, died in combat in Afghanistan in 2013. Bill has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 1996.
Now Available: A Duet of Dying
The latest release from
Swimming with Elephants Publications
is now available!
“A Duet of Dying is a poignant and honest approach to surviving terminal sickness, living disabled, and the constant navigation of the healthcare system of the United States. From honest confessions like remaining with somebody caught cheating “Because I was on his health insurance,” in Why Did You Stay? part 3, to the foreign and familiar feeling of not knowing yourself apart from the “alien” in Pathogen, this collection is a special one for its approach through — and more aptly: with — sickness. Then there is the raw cruelty that is given a voice so aptly in Ringtones into Dirges; here, at last, are words for the battle with collections calls for MRIs and diagnostic tests; those which are necessary to life, but the collected debt of which could easily drive somebody to death. And I think, finally, finally, here is an honest testament — of love, of life (while actively dying), of death (and still living). And wonderfully, a narrative from two powerful queer voices, who offer this bittersweet collection, so purely.”
~Reviewed by Maxine Peseke
As always, we encourage ordering the collection from the authors personally or through an independent bookstore, but the collection is also available through Amazon and other distributors.
About the Authors
Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer poet, photographer, barista, and bartender living in Seattle, WA with their chosen family and a couple very soft cats. They sit on the board of Rain City Poetry Slam and consistently host weekly poetry shows.
Erin Schick (they/them) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled social worker living in upstate New York and focused on disability justice and queer liberation. Their interests include the Pacific Northwest, women’s soccer, and sled dogs.
Weekly Write: “Save the Elephants” by Erin Conway
Save the Elephants
Mamá liked travelling. Mamá liked to talk about what to bring,
Or what not to bring.
Mamá grabbed a palm sized ball
Of masa dough ground from Gloria’s trip to the molino.
It tapped and tapped around to tell the story of her hills and nestled village
Monte and cayukos.
Mamá loved to plan trips she would never take
Behind Mamá’s steps rested her shadow.
The elephant’s mother always casts
The largest, the longest
Shadow on its skin.
I was only four when Mamá packed for Mexico City.
I was only four when she did not return.
Ten years later, I study geometry. Gloria counts micro credit.
I study history. Gloria listens to stories.
I study geography. Gloria walks between rural villages.
I study physical education. Gloria brushes toddlers’ blackened teeth
Left by the fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers who headed North.
Spanish. Maya. Large, expansive names.
San Cristobal de las Casas.
All missing paint in lime green.
Yaxchilán. Chipapa de Corzo.
Jungle. Pine trees. Coffee. Chocolate.
Drunk on mist.
¿Y yo?
My skin tone is a blend,
A highland blend of coffee
That gringos drink
In large mugs that are not supposed to have bottoms
In large mugs Gringos find the energy
To step on and over the stones, the stories,
Of our past.
I close my eyes.
I hear Mamá empty frijoles parados into my dish.
I smile and add chilé.
I close my eyes.
I hear Mamá pour coffee into my mug.
I smile and add sugar.
“Where are you working today Gloria?” I ask.
“The woman’s coop.”
“Can I come?”
“Instead of school?”
“I love sitting near the weavers.
Untangling strings. Cutting knots.”
Señoras squint through donated lenses.
Elephants do not have good eyesight.
I know I don’t know the strings’ colors,
My colors, I don’t know.
In the women’s midst, I return to a herd.
But it’s not my herd.
I’m an orphan. I’m homeless.
I’m an immigrant? Migrant? Refugee?
I sit on the front step,
Leaned back against the stones,
I stretch forward. I write.
“Related elephant females stay together for life.
Related elephant families share resources,
Avoid danger,
Care for young.”
The flowers reflect days’ yellow brightness through ever present dust.
Their husbands saw the same
Scattered in corn kernels. Spread out to dry.
Free trade brought new colors in cotton string.
New demand for old traditions. Cheap corn
Unemployment.
Mamá had wrapped her faja
Like the ones strapped in these looms
Mamá had covered her guipil in her rebozo.
Inspired by Comandante Ramona
Mamá had boarded a bus to the First Indigeneous Congress.
If Mamá had reached México City, I don’t know.
I watch the women’s fingers.
The women pick up strings and drop them.
If only one string had been long enough
To help Mamá find her way home.
I think of elephant matriarchs.
Which woman will throw herself
On the electric fence?
Or learn to open the gate?
For the rest to escape.
I stare upward, beyond
Barbed wire. Chipped cement. Broken glass.
The sweep of the mountain is also the sky.
The top is not a peak.
There is more room than people would say,
Would want me to believe.
We can all fit on the mountain though I started farther down.
Blue, the green of grass.
White, the water spray of clouds.
Gloria’s heavy feet climb.
Others feel her trail in their soles.
Like elephants, I lean forward on my toes.
We refuse to be on our heels.
When I stand on tiptoes, I know
The mountain is not so high.
In the evening,
We turn beans from parados to colados to volteados.
“The thicker the better,” I say.
“But less to go around,” Gloria reminds.
I was only four when Gloria kept me.
I was only four when Gloria became the leader of our orphan band.
Gloria shows me nothing directly.
Instead she shows me
Hooded sweatshirts, holy cards and birth control.
I eat my supper alone. Flip cable channels.
I trace my finger along the tortilla
Wrinkled, elephant, skin.
I dig through the garbage
Between two fingers gently, I hold buried papers
With my elephant’s trunk
$2,000. $8,000. Mexico.
Petitions. Protests. El Salvador.
Felony. Theft. Guatemala.
Muertes. En camino. Honduras.
Sanctuary.
Night steps forward.
I fall asleep and dream.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
Surrounded by lions. Far from home.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
She screamed to keep the jaguars away, for the family to accept her.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
She wrecked her vocal chords.
It was her voice,
Or, her life.
I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees at UW-Madison. I began my professional career as a bilingual teacher in the Madison Metropolitan School District, but this work stems from my desire to seek a deeper understanding of my students and foster intercultural connections in the field of education. I accepted a Peace Corps assignment in Guatemala. For the past ten years, I worked both teaching and training teachers in Guatemala, including Atitlan Multicultural Academy, and most recently I worked as the Director of Literacy Staff Training and Curriculum Development with Child Aid. Previously, working in education in Guatemala, I currently work for UW-Madison, Division of Extension. My literary efforts focus on diverse books initiatives. Publishing credits include Midwest Review, Sonder Review, Vine Leaves Press, The Hopper, Cleaning up Glitter, Kind Writers and Adelaide Literary Magazine. I manage a blog and website, http://www.erinconway.com.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “The Sunflower Song” by KilhaPoetry
The Sunflower Song
I dreamed that I stumbled upon a field full of giant sunflowers
And lay my head there down to die.
While the heavens gathered up all their stormiest rain clouds
That fell from the tubular sky’s.
Too great was my sadness to fight.
Too lost to the tragedy now begun.
Alone in my field full of sunflowers
With no life to wish to carry on.
I dreamed that the earth consumed me.
My wretched body decaying outwardly in.
Until there was no memory of my presence or being
And no one could remember even who I had been.
I dreamed that sunflowers grew wilder and strong,
Their mighty stalks growing thicker with height.
They grew into the horizon and up into the sky’s,
There petals looming with grandiose might.
Cocooned in my deathly slumber,
From the peace in which I now lay.
A curiosity stirred awaking a part of me,
A part no earthly death could just wash away.
And deep in that place of unexistance,
deep in my transient state,
I felt such heavenly beauty
Breath new life into the loneliness place.
Adrift on the wings of salvation,
With courage retuning and restored.
I marvelled at the world so vivid and true
With enough beauty and love for us all.
Now in my field full of sunflowers
that mourned for the life I couldn’t save,
I dreamed of a love to unfold without tragedy.
Without fearing loss or fear itself to be the reason for blame.
I dreamed that I died in a field full of sunflowers,
With such beauty that I had never seen.
And deep in my field full of awesome giant sunflowers,
I’m rebirthed each night in my dreams.
MMKilha is a London born poet with Egyptian and English/Irish heritage. She started writing when she was very young as a way of processing and surviving an abusive environment. She says, “I started writing because I couldn’t talk about what was going on. I wasn’t trying to be creative, I just needed a way to communicate”.
She has continued to use it as a method of reflection ever since.
With a back catalogue of work big enough to fill her garage, she only became public in 2017 after a friend encouraged her to overcome her insecurities being dyslexic and having ADHD.
She says the impact of writing means she no longer feels the need to apologise for herself; “If people like the work that’s great. I’m over the moon when my words speak to another person but if they don’t, that’s fine too. Since being open about these issues I have received so much support from other dyslexic writers who tell me how much my honesty has meant to them.”
MMKilha is currently in her final year of her Masters in Childhood and Adolescent
Psychotherapy working with children from abusive backgrounds to help them make sense of their own stories though creative interventions.
MMKilha performs independently on the London spoken word scene as well as with the @Poetical_Word collective poeticalword.org providing them with a vital Therapist in Residence service for their outreach programmes.
For a selection of her work or to get in contact she can be found on Instagram @kilhapoetry.
Please feel free to get in touch.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “Treehouse on Mars” by Karen Poppy
Treehouse on Mars
When we’re born, and old enough,
We’ll build a treehouse
On Mars, just
Like one we heard
Our parents’ parents built
To play in as children on Earth.
Our Martian colony
Will have no trees.
Only small plants
For consumption.
No birds singing in branches.
No sun shining through leaves.
We’ll build our treehouse,
Not in a tree, but on
An artificial resin trunk.
Ancient song of birds
Will filter in from speakers.
Pink glow will light our days.
When we’re born, and old enough,
We will learn of trees.
How they lived and
Burned with finality in
Forests and jungles
Of memory and loss.
New trees never could
Meaningfully replace
Old-growth in locations
Strange on our tongues:
Africa, Brazil, Colorado,
Tongass, Siberia, Indonesia.
When we’re born, and old enough,
We’ll live on a planet
Far from scent of real resin, pine.
Far from sound of wind through woods.
Far from shade of towering canopies.
Far from trees’ majestic heights.
Never will we have memory
Of vast Amazonian wonders,
Jungle animals, forest animals.
Just pictures, holograms, stored DNA.
Koala, Orangutan,Giraffe,
Lion, Antelope, Gazelle.
When we’re born, and old enough,
We’ll live here, born here
Like our parents.
Tell stories in secret
Of how we want to
Rebuild Earth.
Although we’ll know, like
Our treehouse, our dream
Is not real, and never can be.
The trees and animals, gone.
No matter what we’ve kept,
What we’ve stored.
At this point, even our own
Existence is hypothetical,
Since life on Mars cannot
Likely occur, be sustained.
Right now, humans have to start
By trying to save Earth.
As we say what we fear,
Our voices stay stuck, unheard
In a distant, probably
Impossible future,
Like roots dead or never born:
It is too late. Too much is lost.
Karen Poppy has work published in Blue Unicorn, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, ArLiJo, Wallace Stevens Journal, and The Cortland Review (Best of the Net nomination). She has a chapbook forthcoming with Finishing Line Press, and another chapbook forthcoming with Homestead Lighthouse Press. An attorney licensed in California and Texas, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Pre-orders are Available for A Duet of Dying
“What is it to face something defined as inevitable and find some still breathing beauty within, however imperfect that beauty may be? If you are Shanna Alden or Erin Schick, then the answer is: sing your heartsong as vibrantly, fiercely and unapologetically as possible. With this collection, they do all of that and more. These are poems that do not attempt to define or even simply describe the experience of living with disability, or surviving terminal illness within a broken system of care. No, these are poems that translate every breath into a minor miracle, speaking to the blossoming of pain as eloquently as the slow simmer of determination beneath the surface. A Duet of Dying is, almost, improperly titled – because with every poem, you can almost hear the swelling voices of the choir, of all of those out there in the wide world who have experiences that will make this work invaluable. This collection is so utterly, inevitably human, it will leave you shaken.”
Zachary Kluckman, CPSW
Author of Some of It is Muscle and The Animals in Our Flesh
Pre-order A Duet of Dying today: https://py.pl/AMg6UcckG7C !
Coming Soon: A Duet of Dying
Down, but not Out
It is no secret that the pandemic has affected Swimming with Elephants Publications in several ways. Since the office has been closed, and will likely remain closed for the rest of the year, creating publications have become difficult and time consuming. However, we are still kicking.
We would like to announce the upcoming release of A Duet of Dying by Shanna Alden and Erin Schick, the first of three chapbooks which were chosen for publication from our 2020 Chapbook Open Call. Originally scheduled for release in May, the pandemic has pushed our release date to August 15, 2020.
Follow our website and Facebook page for upcoming release and performance information.
An additional note to our followers:
The ability to publish is a luxury which should not be the top priority of our society at the moment, and it has not been the top priority for our staff. However, we have every intention of fulfilling the contracts we made before the pandemic.
Although we have no idea what the future holds for our small press, we have our fingers crossed that we will survive this difficult time and come out on the other side but it is far too soon to know what we will look like in the next year.
We still have two more chapbooks from last year’s Open Call which we hope to release before the end of 2020 and are hoping to still be able put together our 2020 anthology. We have extended our timeline for these publications and we appreciate the patience of our followers and poets.
You can continue to support us by supporting our poets and supporting independent bookstores.
Weekly Write: “I Wear My Grandmother’s Necklace Two Days After I Call the Suicide Crisis Line” by Auden Eagerton
I Wear My Grandmother’s Necklace Two Days After I Call the Suicide Crisis Line
I’ve never liked my neck much in it, but it doesn’t matter.
I’d rather feel you beating against my throat when I walk
than my hands against the soundproof glass,
miming an SOS to the praying mantis on the other side.
The night I called from an empty classroom,
I dreamt my throat was stuffed with long yellow feathers.
I split my arms till they became wings,
did a danse macabre off the tallest building I could find.
Anything, anything to stop my headless shadow.
The next day the sun shone as if I wasn’t
a crater with a body, hollowed out
by foreign palms searching my wounds.
They left the pulp on a conference room table
for me to scoop into a mason jar.
It’s sat on my nightstand ever since,
muted buzzes coming from under the lid.
Today I revel in our shared names,
try to handle myself the way you held
the fledgling in the front yard,
make myself believe I deserve cupped hands, soft edges.
Above all, that even betrayed by my own scent,
you would have loved me anyway.
Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English, as well as a minor in Film Studies, at Kennesaw State University. Their interests lie heavily in studying American literature and poetry. In addition to publishing their own poetry, Eagerton aims to one day become an editor for a literary magazine and be involved in both sides of the publishing process. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, and Kudzu.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “The Astronaut” by Rachel Glass
The Astronaut
One day, I’ll look out of my bedroom window
and smile, even if the world is ending.
The world is ending,
I tell my doctor.
My doctor tells me I shouldn’t fantasize
about smiling out of my bedroom window.
Smiling out of my bedroom window
is the opening scene, of a sitcom based on my life.
The sitcom based on my life makes others laugh.
Others laugh, and I am jealous because I cannot laugh.
I cannot laugh because I am too tired.
I am too tired,
is something else I tell my doctor.
I tell my doctor,
I am an astronaut,
readjusting to a normal life.
This normal life is making me homesick:
I miss the emptiness of space, and being wrapped in stars.
Being wrapped in stars is a distant memory,
and now, I am wrapped in blankets.
I am wrapped in blankets because a normal life
has too many people, too much noise,
and too much gravity, holding me in my bed.
In my bed is where I am happy.
I am happy when I’m alone,
I tell my doctor.
I tell my doctor,
I am happy,
even though my world is ending.
Rachel Glass currently lives in Scarborough, England and has been writing poetry since she was was sixteen. She has had a number of poems published on the Poetry Society’s website and a poem was featured in a Valley Press anthology. She is usually found writing, drinking hot chocolate and wearing glittery shoes.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “To women who have never known Amazonia” by Liza Wolff-Francis
To women who have never known Amazonia
Dear endangered curves,
Dear blossoming then sagging breasts,
Dear shoulders in wait,
Dear curious vulva,
Dear fairy tale princesses and your witches,
There is a landscape not impossible
for freedom of women.
Trees of proud limbs,
where leaves whisper poems to sky.
Earth savory, fingers to lips.
Its scent in rain
like the imagination of clouds,
fog over trails of fern and animal,
brisk air in nostrils, inside cheeks
like the creation of taste buds,
in lungs, stomach, and toes.
An interpretation of paradise,
this place holds always
the possibility of disappearing,
Weeks, months, lifetimes
of us working beside each other,
sharing space under day and moon.
It took time for us to get here,
and it first meant leaving
those places where we start out
at the bottom, to create a world
where women are the hive
and also the bees.
Where, you might ask, is a place like that?
Where women are valued for who they are,
not for what they can give?
Not for babies we can birth,
or how we can serve you,
or for the stars between our thighs,
and not for our lullabies.
There is only one place I know.
I would tell you to come
if I thought it was safe. If I thought
I could spell out clear instructions
on how to arrive, if I thought you
would easily arrive alive, I would tell you.
Dear doubter,
Dear captive woman,
Dear woman lost to patriarchy,
Dear body in danger,
Dear self, seeking safety,
Dear traveler,
Dear imagination,
Dear world changer,
If you want to come and can make it here,
this is your invitation.
With love,
Liza Wolff-Francis is a literary artist with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her writing has appeared in Steam Ticket, eMerge, Minute Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Edge, and on various blogs. She has a poetry chapbook out called ‘Language of Crossing’ (2015, Swimming With Elephants Press).
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “Habitual Healing” by Timothy Kelly
Habitual Healing
The body has a way of remembering
the habits that we create.
Some call it muscle memory,
While others say they are instinctual,
Like the way I hold her hand:
With mine covering her thumb and index finger
Because my hand is so much larger.
We can’t hold them any other way,
It doesn’t feel right otherwise.
One day, I drove the streets I knew
Remembering the charred house
That has been replaced.
I can still feel the dresser, the carpet,
And the heat on my back
As I searched the way since I was taught:
Crawl, Reach, Sweep. Crawl, Reach, Sweep.
Habits are created because they’re obvious
And they are easy.
The dishes are easier to place in the sink
Rather than wash them right away
And laundry is best left in the basket
Because who actually has time to fold it?
Flaws are simple to infuse into my thoughts
because they stare me in the face
Who wants to have a scavenger hunt
For the things they like about themselves?
Habits are a thought process
Built over time, cues and triggers
A call for help, is a call for help,
No matter where you are.
Which is why “off duty” does not exist
And work does not stay at the office.
The back of a plane simply
becomes a much smaller ambulance
The whining engines now sirens
Descending upon our destination
This does not mean that you cannot change
But that it needs to become more obvious.
Gradual steps create new patterns
on a journey to a reward:
Acceptance, that overflowing dishes are okay
Laundry will be folded in time
That you are okay the way you are
And you will become who you need to be
Tim is a Healing Artist, social worker and volunteer Firefighter/EMT. As an Introvert trained to appear extroverted, he creates to share in the human experience with you and is always interested in hearing your story.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “Skin Deep, a love poem” by Rivka Nomberg
Skin Deep, a love poem
Knit and purl.
It’s a herringbone world.
We’re sewn together
and together, we sow
one cell at a time,
integumentary rhyme,
a molecular snare.
We’re a pair!
Like socks,
adorned and adored
one by the other,
stitched over hoop
and overstitched raw;
the zigzag law of
love knots:
tight, loose,
parallel, cross.
All into rising
ribbons of flesh
over branches of bone,
a wreath of wrinkles.
Baby’s breath
tucked into continents of coral.
Wrapped,
we’re open.
Dermatoglyphs, whorled,
bind at the tips
of loving and tying
until all is counted;
but not unraveled,
not dying.
Rivka Nomberg comes from a family of Talmudic scholars, doctors, and woodworkers. Her interests include gardening, cooking, medicine, and raising teenage boys. She lives in Arizona.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “Body Talk” by Sara Brown
Body Talk
Days stretch like unruly vinca vine spilling out of upright, Bernardo red geranium baskets; we snip them with tough-handed scissors and Katie weaves them into crowns to place upon our heads, tiny limelight leaves cascading over our faces.
Nights are short as flats of youthful monoecious begonias sprouting, thick with moisture, heavy. I dream of unloading dust-bottomed trucks and wake myself in sleep as my arms support imaginary trays and pass empty air onto my spare pillow, rolling beads of sweat tucked behind my ears for the demand of a defeated body even sleep cannot stop.
The heat scoops out the mind, replaces it with rhizomes and rootstalks grasping at water. I see petals pressed to my eyelids. It is more than just labor I exchange for paper, it is the way I learn to breathe, reaching for water like flora, beginning to crave the burn of sunlight in any enclosed space.
I trade in smooth skin for dirt ingrained into each lined path of my fingerprint, collections of bruises I hold on my legs; the slopes of kneecaps, deep blue like that of fertilizer droplets onto sundried concrete.
Pushing hot metal loading carts of hanging Boston ferns, I rely on brass guitar hamstrings, twisted tight, and round back corners of greenhouse plastic to spill out with the backfield breeze tucking more water behind my ears. The peppers grow in the adjacent field, sun hats and beaten flannels hunch to pick lines. I count my steps and check at lunch, rubbing ice in paths across my calves.
My stomach dives a flip when I see the tapeners, a vine and plant tying tool, under the counter next to the sandwich bag of stale cigarettes. August, burning, I spent days propping up hungover shoots of blackberry plants, plump black fruit at the tips, clinging to stems. Hot blackberries melted on our tongues as we tried to keep count of the early crop, tried to coerce photosynthesis into biting its own tongue as we snipped off the white flower buds.
No one grabs my weight, assists my kneecaps when I collapse in iron-efficient orange dirt, my body pushing up dust into nostrils. Buckets for catching weeds thrown in the air sit at the wood line, good containers for vomiting out heat stroke. I heave the remnants into the flower graveyard back towards the edge of the property, where my DNA and failed, moldy bulbs of lilies meld together, hold a plot in the fertile soil where pansies sprout up each spring. The life always returns.
I walk at the end of October, retire my bones until the next planting season. In our language of the flower, the root, the bee, what can you say about a woman and her body that mine has not already said?
Sara Brown received her BA in literature with a concentration in creative writing from Stockton University in December 2018. I have had my photography published in Into the Void, Midwestern Gothic, Camas, and my poetry and creative nonfiction in Tiny Leaf, the Raw Art Review, Permafrost, and Toho Journal.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “Memory By Scent” by Betsy Littrell
Memory By Scent
Betsy Littrell
Sitting under a pine tree
in the grass, my son plays
with a plastic sphere, trying to move
a tiny steel ball through
a maze, his tongue out
as he concentrates. A daughter
pushes her mother
in a wheelchair next to
the park, and they both
smile at us, the same
smile, from the same
face, one with deeper
wrinkles and wiser
eyes. I wonder if the mother
is from the memory care center
across the street and if a twilight
walk is their evening routine.
Their smiles tell me the story
of why the nursing home
was built next to a place
filled with the cracks
of baseball bats and children’s
shrieks. I start
to count my son’s
eyelashes, and I name
all five freckles on the right
side of his face. And the lone pine
suddenly smells like an entire forest.
Betsy Littrell is a whimsical soccer mom to four boys, working on her MFA in creative writing at San Diego State University. Her recent or forthcoming publications include Little Patuxent Review, Adanna, San Diego Poetry Annual, The Road Not Taken, Prometheus Dreaming and Literary Mama among others. In addition, she volunteers with Poetic Youth, teaching poetry to underserved elementary students.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: 2.0 by Sahar Fathi
2.0
Today, midday
While walking down the street
I inhaled and smelled Iran
And for a moment
I forgot my people were
Banned 2.0
Travel restricted
With bills pending for
Sanctions
And preemptive force
To rain bombs
On my cousins
For a moment
I forgot the hate and
Instead
I smelled the honeysuckle
In my grandmother’s front yard
And I was
Transported to the bazaars
Filled with people
Who look like me
Who tweeze one eyebrow
Into two
Like me
Who can pronounce my name
Properly
People descended
From poets like Rumi
And super hero attorneys
Like Shirin Ebadi
For a moment I forgot
My blood shot eyes
And my pounding headache
From restless nights
And aggressive headlines
Spewing lies
For a moment
I was just me
Unapologetically
Bound between two countries
Me
Previously published in ‘ARTS by the People’ on March 21.
Sahar graduated from the University of Washington Law School and is a member of the New York bar. She also earned a Masters in International Studies from the University of Washington, and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California with a dual Bachelor of Arts in French and International Relations. Additionally, Sahar attended the Sorbonne Université in Paris, France from 2003-2004 and received a diploma in International and European Law from the Université Jean-Moulin in Lyon, France in 2008. She has served as adjunct faculty at both Seattle University and the University of Washington School of Law. Sahar is a past president and co-founder of the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington, as well as the founder of its Legal Clinic – the first Middle Eastern Legal Clinic in the country. She is a past board member for the ACLU, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the UNA – USA. She is a current board member for One America Votes. She has been published in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice, the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law, and the Gonzaga Law Review. Her poetry has been printed in ‘Writers Resist’ and the ‘Writers Resist: Anthology (2018).’ It has also been featured in the Feelings journal and Not Your Mother’s Breastmilk. Her favorite Persian dish is Fesenjoon, and in 2016 she finally mastered her Tadiq technique.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.
Click here check out the 2019 Anthology: Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.
Weekly Write: “Carrion Are We” by James Redfern
Carrion Are We
a hostile takeover broke
egg all upon the faces
of the fucks
standing with their limp handles
bent down over their useless hands
a harsh wind blew rain
up underneath the flashing,
and all the fiery steeds
went unfed for yet another night
foreign soldiers ran the borders,
all the senators were set awash
in blood and excrement,
and then the hammer came down
as spotlights were drawn
upon the intersections of the Interstates
all across this mighty and curséd continent
a thousand heads must fall
and then a thousand more
again and again
until the end of the day
on into the darkness of night
and on into the bleeding
of a new morning
and around and back again
and again
until the long count is filled up
one more time with emptiness
when rabid dogs run the monkeys
even the most noble lion
must stand alone
against the frothing jaws
in order to survive
the geared teeth of the meated machine
clinical sociopaths
back-alley thugs
and broken malcontents
enlisted and elevated by corporations
to worship profit above all else
to run the world
to plant false flags
to make immoral boasts
and spread the truth so thin
it slices through synapses
and breaks the yoked backs
of all the rest
somehow still remaining halfway sane
angry belief and lustful faith
turn preachers and pimps
into pry bars straining
to tear freedom down
and topple all the best of us
into the pool of shit they call the status quo
crucified butchers run the highway lines,
evangelists keep raping children,
heads is tails, tails is heads,
and peace officers keep squeezing
the life out of the lungs
of citizens without power
or caught alone in the dead of night
or in the light of day
nailed to both my hands
are wounds of justice
left to kill
until this here body dies
in the shadows of greater
men and women
who came and went before
and hereafter
hands for nails
nails for hands
the rabid jaws always
tear the wings
from the ribs
and the first meat had
is always the heart
thereby lost
forever in the feast
of carrion
James Redfern was born and raised in Long Beach, California. Redfern is a graduate of Grinnell College. His work has been published by Whizdome Press, Great Lakes Poetry Press, Transcend, Fear and Loathing in Long Beach, and elsewhere. He is the author of several novels (most recently HECATOMB) and several volumes of poetry (most recently Catfish in a Bowl Redux).
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