MER VOX Quarterly – Spring 2020 Visions of Home: A MER VOX Poetry Folio Featuring Melissa Andres,Elana Bell, Ann Farley, Melissa Joplin Higley, Jennifer Schomburg Kanke, Veronica Kornberg, Libby Maxey, Jendi Reiter, Margaret Rozga, Brad Shurmantine, Tezozomoc, Pramila Venkateswaran, Nicola Waldron, Jane Yolen M.A.M.A. Issue 41 – Poetry Ann E. Wallace, Art Michele Landel You’re Invited! Mom Egg Review Vol. 18 “HOME” Launch Party & Reading Sat. May 9th, 4 – 6 PM Poets House NYC
Author: Mom Egg Review
Visions of Home: A Poetry Folio This spring, in print and online, Mom Egg Review and MER VOX consider the many facets of HOME. The poets in this folio explore, among other issues, the mother’s body as home, lost and adopted homes, the pleasures and frustrations of home, being at home at work and in the world. We invite you in to the homes conjured by our featured poets. — Marjorie Tesser Featuring poems by: Melissa Andres Elana Bell Ann Farley Melissa Joplin Higley Jennifer Schomburg Kanke Veronica Kornberg Libby Maxey Jendi Reiter Margaret Rozga Brad Shurmantine Tezozomoc…
Margaret Rozga Home in the Nick of Time Mid-sentence we rise from park benches, mothers, nannies, grandmas, and call children down from their climbing. Starlings flutter, lift off power lines, sparrows flit into the brush, tufts from the cottonwood spiral down like innocence falling. Translucence rolls in from the west, greens the sky. A neighborhood cat slinks across the street. First slant of rain slicks the porch— wooden steps soon slippery as gossip— blurring our vision, hard, hard rain. Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga has published four books, including Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems (2017), written with…
Pramila Venkateswaran History of my Suitcase I drag the large green suitcase from its corner, clouds of cobwebs and dust rising from it making me sneeze. Peering into its dark emptiness, I hear Amma’s quiet words, smell incense and sandalwood, sweat and musk, invoking unknown streets snaking behind highways and store fronts blazing their neon marquees. It will once again make its way across the Atlantic, over deserts and warring nations to lush paddy fields, orchards and spires, before making its way back to its home, inviting a dense skein of cobwebs to veil lacerations, broken zippers and locks, but…
Melissa Joplin Higley A Mother’s Lament He knew her as the beginning. A union of bodies divided into another, then replicated exponentially; he grew inside her. Soon, his heartbeat patterned hers. He came to know her murmurs and sighs, shortened and breathy. He heard small voices: outside—a brother, a sister—chanting bits of nursery rhymes, cupping small hands over small songs, welcoming the mystery in her belly. * She sang to him, too, while she washed dishes, her belly pressing against the edge of the sink more each day. She dipped her hands again and again into iridescence. She knew…
Ann Farley Bare Legs on Warm Wood A Visit to Stony Brook Wildlife Sanctuary Ann Farley, poet and caregiver who lives in Beaverton, OR, is happiest outside, preferably at the beach.
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke The House of Never Enough 1. Architect I am a brick wall of want she knows she’s not a wrecking ball strong enough to take me down She is the one that built me and in her building no longer recognizes the floor plan or the mortar. 2. Hand-Me-Downs Fuck those brown corduroy slacks that went out of style before the knees wore out, I will not wear them on picture day or any other. I will not listen to their sushing as I walk or their straining as I sit. I refuse their reminder that…
Tezozomoc Tezozomoc is a Los Angeles Chicano Poet and 2009 Oscar Nominated Activist and has been published by Floricanto Press, Gashes!: Poems and Pain from the halls of injustice, a collection of poetry. He has also been published in the following journals: The Oddball Magazine, Spitpoetzine, and The Silver Stork.
Jane Yolen Mysteries Birth is not mysterious to the mother whose body is cradle and cafe. Who listens for breath, feels a whale swimming in the sea of her. She sends hand signals against her skin, is rewarded with a kick. She is the first house, the first home, both comfort and comforter. So why this mystery about writing something down? Just open your mind Take a gulp of air, bear down hard, and push. Jane Yolen has published over 383 books, with 400 in sight! She has received 6 honorary doctorates for her body of work from six New…
Brad Shurmantine The Big Yard Stunned, still moving in a sick green haze my widowed mom stared at a sea of blueprints and chose the one with the biggest yard, a field big enough to swallow up our pain and terror—a place to land. But her three boys saw a baseball field, saw home plate and stepped off the bases. That hedge was the end zone (poor bushes, whittled away by goal line stands). Season after season after season side yard touch football quick slants toward Grandview Road pinpoint passes waited or going long sailing over the boxwoods…