Close Menu
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER ONLINE
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Craft
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
      • Bookshelf
    • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Poem of the Month
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube Tumblr Threads
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER ONLINE
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Craft
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
      • Bookshelf
    • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Poem of the Month
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
NEWSLETTER
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home » Silver Linings

Silver Linings

0
By Mom Egg Review on December 15, 2018 MER Literary Folio

Silver Linings

An MER VOX Folio Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach

 

Since the 2016 election, the news has been mostly terrible. Both online and offline we have been barraged 24/7 by an overwhelming level of toxicity. We’d like to offer our readers a respite, however brief.  For our December folio, we’re featuring poems that celebrate silver linings wherever they may be found: in those we love, in nature, in literature, in sisterhood, in memory.

Our hope—for ourselves, for our readers, for poets, for those we love—is that by focusing on one positive thing in the day, we can find a moment of peace despite our challenging times.

The poems we are sharing are personal and examine what brings comfort. As Maria Mazziotti Gillan writes in “Even After All These Years:”

a plate of spaghetti gives me
comfort, the food my mother made
three times a week
when I was a child in the 17th St. tenement,
that food we ate every day

Other poems, such as “Ode” by Catherine Esposito and “Scarred” by Allia Abdullah-Matta look for joy in the inanimate (a pen), nature, in dreams, sisterhood and those we love

From “Ode”

the pen that works, the fingers that hold it
the teenage boys who grow their minds at school
the daughter with unicorn dreams
the husband also rising
the quiet morning, then the raucous afternoon

From “Scarred”

I dream/ I am in a dream
at El Viejo Yayo
me and the women of my life
best sisters to an only child
tastes of Africana, Caribeña, Americana.

As Jen Karetnick reminds us in her poem, “Brief Portrait of Millennials as a Nebulizer Or, There Are Reasons to Breathe,” there is still the possibility of hope:

We can only write a prescription for hope, drop in
the drug. The rest is a matter of pharmaceutical
course: They are the compressor to spirit change,
the mouthpiece to deliver an open-throated, unifying mist.

It is with great honor and love that we present this Vox Folio: Silver Linings.

Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach

 

Featured Poets
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Jen Karetnick
Allia Abdullah-Matta
Catherine Esposito Prescott
Radhiyah Ayobami
Julia Lisella
Keisha Molby-Baez

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleChristina Springer Poetry
Next Article Christina Springer Interviewed by JP Howard

Comments are closed.

May 8, 2025

Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree by Jennifer Martelli

May 8, 2025

Venus Anadyomene by Alyssa Sinclair

May 4, 2025

Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (non) Buddhist Memoir by Linda Trinh

May 4, 2025

Apartness by Judy Kronenfeld

May 4, 2025

Inconsolable Objects by Nancy Miller Gomez

May 4, 2025

All This Can Be True by Jen Michalski

May 4, 2025

Leafskin by Miranda Schmidt

May 1, 2025

MER Poem of the Month – May 2025

April 27, 2025

MER Submissions Are Open!

April 20, 2025

MER Reading a Mass Poetry in Salem MA

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube Tumblr Threads
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact
MER - Mom Egg Review
PO Box 9037, Bardonia, NY 10954
Contact [email protected]

Copyright © 2025 MER and Mom Egg Review

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.