Eileen Cleary Orphan Sky For John Keats Don’t say the father died; say night falls like a father off a horse. Don’t say the boy misses him. Or that the executor betrays. Say father’s a pink carnation the child recalls as love but who left him in the care of no such sorrel affection. Do not mention the mother’s desertion. Zinnia says mother’s soaked in sorrow. So sorry. And she’s come home to die. Strike this from his memory. At least until he lodges in the quarters over the surgery where no flowers speak. Then let him name…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Karen George Frida Kahlo’s My Nurse and I, 1937 I. Infant with an adult head, held loosely, near falling from a wet nurse’s arms—face covered by a dark mask, a grimace. Lush foliage reaches her shoulders. Sky of raindrops mirrors two pearls of milk leaking like teardrops from the right breast. The left a translucent network, clusters of milk beads—tiny gold flowers. Frida stares into space, empty. Doesn’t suckle. The milk, dry stems, jabs her open mouth. Any minute she will choke. II. I open my mother’s door, hold my breath. Her dread rivets me. She whimpers, tells…
Jen Karetnick Advised to Keep a Journal During Lockdown, I Pretend I Am in Pompeii and hold a glass to the wall of the world hissing with a language invented each day anew What sibilance seeps into my ear is mine to lionize in this chamber or censure and leave to petrify in amber for future generations to interpret after prolonged and diligent unearthing Quaran-Teened It does not matter anymore what has been said of destinies lined up in columns and saved like linens in bridal chests. I have become a painted fence harried by…
Tina Kelley Wolf Tree Alone in a field, it grew in every direction, asterisk of wood. If it were fireworks: chrysanthemum, crosette, palm, peony. If emotion: surprise, joy, optimism. If vocabulary: fractal, excrescent. A philosophy: If growth stops in one direction, try the other. Lean up from gravity. Make more and lower branches, holes, snags, shelter. Home to invertebrates, thirty times the birdsong of skinny trees, sixty percent more mammal scat than in crowded upstart copses. Sieving the wind for spare kites. Named for its lone-ness, its greedy stance towards sunlight, the one tree left for shade in the field, it’s often crowded…
Ellen Kombiyil In The Old Apartment Before Language Fully Bloomed, The Landlord Tried To Evict Us The skeleton key lost, mismatched furniture hauled to the truck, Ma hollerin I’m ready to be done with this place, re-tracing her pacing worn through blue linoleum. Ma, don’t fret. The landlord won’t give it back: each cupboard scratch each picture frame nail hole she’ll ding you for until the deposit’s gone. What was it, Ma you expected to become? Traipsing down hall steps, careening, plaster to wood banister foot over ankle a little violently & startling in the near dark. …
K.T. Landon Who Are We in Heaven if we are perfect, our past a meadow burning in our wake? Who are you, mother, if not disappointed by me? Who am I without my self-righteous superiority? After the fire a different forest rises. Imagine, after so much history, to meet, unarmored. Could we bear to know how much we loved each other? K.T. Landon is the author of Orange, Dreaming (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She was a finalist in Narrative’s Ninth Annual Poetry Contest and her work has appeared in Passages North, Tinderbox Poetry Review, and…
Marjorie Maddox Inside One house and this rhythm of ritual: 6:00 am, 8:00 am, 4:00 pm—our laptops open in the kitchen, the living room, a bedroom, Hellos at the refrigerator, while ascending/ descending the stairs, the constant tap of keys the background of faraway horses we’re all riding— professor/parents, one-day professor/son— across this long expanse of knowledge where we’re kicking up dust someone goes out for a walk; someone returns on our way to a strange horizon we hope is sunrise. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good night. And we gather for whatever’s unfrozen or freshly baked, and we watch…
Twila Newey self-isolation Penelope’s Time to move slowly, up and down, as threads of grass in a strong wind without destination—bend, straighten, bend, straighten warp: : : to hold still in tension. weft: : : to move through tense— to have loved, to love, to have lost, to lose, to have passed, to pass Is language time passed through a loom continuously woven & unwoven ? Do not ask Odysseus for a straight answer he will give you a hero’s story, a…
Sarah Sarai The Crooked Road Without Improvement “…among the most disturbing things to me were the long paved streets.” Nietzsche / Jugendschriften She is young: a fact which proves nothing. A twelve-year old in an abode on the crooked road without improvement: a strait winding itself round, the asphalt roar of a cement mixer churning, the resolve of a chute. To offset appetites for suburban nostalgia think: rats: scurrying: ivy’s sprinkler-ed banks before the house, before as in: I trembled before the hanging judge, so trembled ivy before the squatting house. No rats in the house squat atop…
Sarah Dickenson Snyder Skinhunger Don’t feel lost right now, I tell myself. Remember the skinhunger of your life— each new romantic love blossoming in your hand having to be on his leg as you sat shoulder to shoulder, the first moment she was placed on your chest, the way nursing was a gift, something holy, that favorite photograph of her sleeping on your sleeping self—motherlove. Skinhunger, huidhonger in Dutch. To mesh two words & name the unnamable, right now seeing neighbors walking by—your hand pulled to the windowpane. Sarah Dickenson Snyder has three poetry collections, The…