Mother / Writer-Artist: MER Literary Folio
In this mixed-genre folio, poets and writers explore the mother and writer identities, their characteristics, confluences and conflicts. (Fun tip: read the excerpted lines as a poem or two).
Prose
Brittany Ackerman, “Big Splashes, So Big”
. . . what it’s like with your child, this feeling of having to pry something open so you can exist.
Jennifer Case, “Things People Tell Me When I Write About Motherhood”
From an editor in NYC (as well as an old boss): “Sorry. I’m not a ‘parenting person.’”
Maggie Cramer and Emily Cramer, “So(ma)tic Poetry Exercises, after CA Conrad”
By God, throw away the coloring pages. Someone else’s outlines.
Derek Davidson, “Medium”
“Start with blue, a cadmium wash spilling” and there I am again.
Geula Geurts, “Moon Child”
You wax when the moon waxes; you wake and I wane.
Tamara J. Madison, “Awkward Agency/Salient Survival”
For this mother/poet-writer-artist, such is life and legacy.
Melissa Mowry, “Cinderella & I”
. . . for the woman I got to be in that life and the people who know only that version of me . . .
Leah Richards, “Ghost, Mother”
My ghost was never patient nor is she proud. She is insatiable.
Amy Gallo Ryan, “Water’s Edge”
Come back, come back, come back!
Poetry
Sharon Dolin, “Two Questions”
My mother would ask, “Is he tall? . . .
Mary Fontana, “Meditation Culminating in a Line From My Son’s Comic Book”
I suppose I was afraid he wouldn’t read.
Jennifer Garfield, “ghazal for the meadow of my heart”
forgive me: this morning i walked through a meadow
Maria Mazziotti Gillan, “When I Was Still Young”
I remember getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning,
Amy Lee Heinlen, “In a Poem Just LIke This One”
a woman, once womb, feels the waistband of her jeans
Batnadiv HaKarmi, “Colic”
A writing mother traces her tradition
Vicki Iorio, “The S-Trap”
After rescuing my daughter’s beheaded
Katie Kalisz, “First Book”
I want to bury the boxes
Tina Kelley, ”I Used to Write Love Poems’
Remember how in college we tired of workshopping
Cathy Cultice Lentes, “Red Pens”
I’m grown now
Allison Mei-li, “I Don’t Want to Write a Poem”
I want to birth a poem
Callie Plaxco, “Aphasia”
There are whole days
Angela Sucich, “Fourth Trimester iPhone Poet”
The night before last, I dreamed my daughter