This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Amanda Judd, is from For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons by Komal Mathew, released by Zone 3 Press in 2021.
Swim Lessons
The God who is there took and divided your breath, which you held The God who is there gave you a clean push of space which you sifted Child! what have you left behind— a stretched summer day? What won’t you do to prove than still water
small gifts like a creation story. under growing waters like you were dividing the Nile. a tiptoe on warm pavement? a clear view of the sun? you want more more than soft steps?
Komal Mathew is Gujarati-American writer from the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. A graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and Sarah Lawrence College, she is the author of For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons, which won the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. She lives with her family in Smyrna, Georgia, where she is the co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly.
After a 25-year career as a paralegal, Amanda Valerie Judd returned to school to earn her AFA in Creative Writing from Normandale Community College. She is currently attending Southern New Hampshire University working to earn her BFA in Creative Writing – Poetry. In 2020, she won the Patsy Lea Core Prize for Poetry. In 2021, her poem “My Only Label” was nominated for “Best of the Net 2021.” Her work has been published or is forthcoming in PAN-O-PLY Magazine, MockingOwl Roost, Trouvaille Review, Prospectus, and Talking Stick 31.
