Mothering Along – MER Online Poetry Folio
Curated by Cindy Veach and Jennifer Martelli
In her poem, “Memo to the Absent,” Wendy Scher presents the Sabbath table set for two: the mother and the daughter. She writes, “We miss you as we kindle the flames, as we taste the wine, as we gather to eat, two shadows on the ceiling.” The poems in our March folio, Mothering Alone, present these moments that feel so touching, so emotional, woven into the tapestry of single parenthood, whether due to circumstances or to choices. The poems burn, like the Sabbath candles, with fear and worry, but also with resolution and joy.
“Now he’s half my son, and half his son,” Julia Alter writes in “The Nursing Chair,” as the speaker tries to calm her fears while dropping her son off at visitation.
I can’t see him,
so I build the shape of him in my body,
where I trust he keeps the shape of me,
and keeps the milk that made him.
This strength to thrive as a single mother and as the resolve to define a family in one’s own terms is rendered as a day full of activism and mothering both children and the community in Adrie Rose’s “Climate Strike.” Here, mothering is a civil and political act,
I organize the strike and fill out paperwork for food stamps.
I organize the strike and I lie in bed
still thrumming from the march, singing, When the night has come,
Stand by me. Listen to my children breathing. Sleeping.
Defining a family is also an act of joyful—and hard-earned—autonomy. Jill Crammond’s speaker in “When I Sell My Wedding Ring at the Pawn Shop,” tell us
Less survivor than happy mother slow to recognize she doesn’t need a husband.
The happy mother is a restaurant, a kitchen with blue Dollar Store dishes, twinkle
lights wrapping the windows, a harbor to rest your head on a shoulder or a table
and still feel held.
“I learned to mother us both,” Sara Quinn Rivara writes in “Single Motherhood Is My Superpower.” The poems in this folio redefine parenting, family. All speak to the fears and joys inherent in motherhood, but especially in single motherhood. The writing is beautifully crafted, honest, and fierce. As if, as Rivara writes, “Light bursts from my clenched fists. / Everywhere, fires burn.”
We hope you will experience the poems in our March folio with as much awe and admiration as we did!
Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach
Featured Poets:
Julia Alter
Ana María Carbonell
Savannah Cooper-Ramsey
Jill Crammond
Kelsey Jordan
Laurin Becker Macios
Kali Pezzi
Sara Quinn Rivara
Adrie Rose
Wendy Mannis Scher