"Ply Mar Swim Club" by Dara-Lyn Shrager

I swam because my mother 

liked to watch me win. I was a tomboy,

broad-shouldered and bulldog-low 

to the ground. Before each meet, 

I knelt to splash my flat chest and threw 

two quick swipes over my bathing cap. 

My mother laid on a blanket 

uphill. She waved me over to sit 

only when my brother drifted 

away. I didn’t know the ground beneath 

her was nothing but fists of weeds.

By the starting block, I stretched

at the redwood picnic tables and licked 

lime Jell-O powder from my palm.  

My hair inking halos on the cement 

between pool and snack bar. 

I wanted my mother to notice me. 

Like the time I held a french fry high 

and a horsefly landed on my finger. 

A blood-blister rose where the bug’s 

mandibles pierced my skin.

To hide my tears, I laid on the hot 

concrete, first on my belly then back.

Because my mother wanted 

a beautiful girl, I wore my flowered 

bathing suit, on which the elastic 

had failed. A towel to hide my thighs. 

I couldn’t make anything fit.

Dara-Lyn Shrager is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA from Bennington College. Her poems appear in many journals, including The Iowa Review, Crab Creek Review, The Greensboro Review, Nashville Review, Salamander, Southern Humanities Review, Thrush, and Yemassee. Her articles have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, and The New York Times. Her first poetry collection, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee was published by Barrow Street Press in 2018.