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Carmen Giménez Smith

Carmen Giménez Smith, a former Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is the author of Odalisque in Pieces (University of Arizona Press, 2009) and Casanova Variations (Dos Press, 2008). Her poetry has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Poetry, Boston Review, Colorado Review, jubilat, POOL, Mandorla, and American Letters and Commentary. She lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University, the publisher of Noemi Press, and the editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol.

The Swimming Pool

8 June 2008
Vol. 8, No. 2
nonfiction, essay, memoir

Other mothers swim in the pool with their children, many of the mothers older. The sun puts a glisten on the ends of their hair. Their bodies underwater look unearthly. The woman in the lane next to me has wide shoulders like my grandmother.

We wrap our children in towels the same way: so that their bodies are swallowed warm with them. We hector them about sunscreen.

When I swim and I am entirely alone with my thoughts, my children only pass through my mind as topics.

I think today when my daughter and son lay together on the bed sleeping. His lanky body next to her curve. Is that not a poem?