Three-Penny Nails

  --for Pop, 10/15/1914 - 9/20/2005

I should have a hammer in my hand

3-penny nails at the ready, or my fingernails

black with transmission grease from one of those

big rigs that hauls freight East down Interstate 8.

Maybe I need to shave a wood shim to keep the refrigerator

from rocking every time I open its door get some milk.

I don't do those things.  Never been able to make my fingers

work like that very well.  Mine fit slick, black computer

keys or # 2 pencils -- words, words, words

that fail me now as I contemplate

my father's death

With him gone, after nearly ninety-one years, who will build

fences, who will be certain that window jams are square,

who'll fix the washing machines of the earth?

I'm the only one who knows, but the world's at the very edge

of utter disintegration.

Eve to Adam (I)

 I stepped from your side wearing those red stiletto

heels your gonads demand, feet sharing the ache

of your body's wound.  Your eyes, varnished with desire,

Adam, reflected my breasts.

I turned away, felt a vitrifying heat in the stare coating each

crease, each curve of my backside.

Is this why I'm here, to be ogled through that spyglass

hanging between your legs?

I'll walk to the east a bit, try to calm myself, perhaps

pick some fruit for your damned dinner tonight. 

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 Swaim's poetry (as in the examples cited above) often carries with it a certain reflectiveness, new-idea twist, or humor.  Work has been published in a wide variety of journals across the U. S..  Additionally, Swaim has a collection of some thirty poems published by Mellen Poetry Press, entitled Rider of Asses and a new collection to be published under the title Lighted Matches.  

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