The Stepdaughters Are the Wicked Ones by Alexis Quinlan Scalding sand kicked to cool, cruel clouds roll past, white on light and happy giddy girls, volleyball reddening wrists. Spike it, one cries. To the side, new wife learning blood again, its fairytale tides. Welcome, hectic heart, to the bottom beneath the bottom, dark and icy trench whose creatures need no eyes to see the dream of a mother who would other and wive forever and ever a man. Game on a beach. Whose serve. Alexis Quinlan is a writer and teacher living in New York City. Her most recent…
Author: Mom Egg Review
The Anxious Child’s Alphabet Kendra Keefer-McGee “The Anxious Child’s Alphabet” consists of twenty-six mixed media works on cradled wood panels. Together the Alphabet explores the existential anxieties of a child who experiences the world differently. “The Anxious Child’s Alphabet” came out of the tension between my children’s need for mothering and safety and my own need to create. My oldest son had ‘existential angst’ beginning at age 3. He worried constantly– about war, viruses, injustice, mortality, and religion. The Anxious Child construct was originally based on him, but came to represent the experience of contemporary life. As any mother…
To My Twenty-Six-Year-Old Daughter by Connie Post You are sitting in front of me two days before my hysterectomy telling me you are having a baby in July asking questions only the moon can answer the wooden grain in the kitchen table runs in the same direction as the conversation we sort through a thousand “ifs” as the kitchen light flickers I move a half empty glass away from surgery instructions that tell me no food past nine, only a sip of water, no jewelry, no aspirin I am telling myself I will be fine all surgeons know how…
Beta splendens (Siamese Fighting Fish) by Paulette A. Pashibin Beautiful carnivores: curious, watchful, with strange appetites. Females eat their eggs. Strong males build bubble nests, fortresses against mother hunger. All are selectively bred — like you, daughter — for specifically desired traits. They are called Delta, Halfmoon, Veiltail — exotic names, like yours. But make no mistake, names can’t change these Rumblefish. Even they find it hard to discern their flirts from their fights. Here’s the twist in our fishbowl: I tried to be both he and she, And the little egg ate its mother. Paulette A. Pashibin is…
dark angel (from calvary) by eve packer all you’ll ever be is a one-nite stand says my mother, at the holiday party i am throwing, in front of my ex- husband, son, & a friend-friend, i take the Courvoisier out of her hand, now its November, you have a pool problem she says from her bed at Calvary–yes, MPHC pool is undergoing renovation– I am swimming at WorldWide Plaza, basement, not so clean, but doable, and i get a phone–flip–no iphones yet– i get this phone because i know they will have to contact me, she will go very…
Daughter by Marjorie Maddox Always, I have grieved this day. Gone and not-gone. Your silence, thick, betrays. Always I have grieved this day. Ghost that turns your face. Promise a song forgone. Always I have grieved this day. Gone and not-gone. Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry—including True, False, None of the Above; Local News from Someplace Else; Wives’ Tales; Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation; Perpendicular As I—the short story collection What She Was Saying; four children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence (assistant editor); and…
Aversion by Erica Hoffmeister There is (a rather common, I’m told) condition similar to postpartum depression, similar to PTSD, aptly named nursing aversion—aversion, the rejection of—in which a physical and mental emotional sensation overtakes your woman-body, your mother-body, like a parasite. Like an alien invader, it rejects your maternal instincts, making nursing your child feel like death, torture, incompleteness. I was told often that breastfeeding would not be easy. I did not understand why. I was displayed a different picture growing up: my mother was born with an infinite milk supply, with some beautiful version of udders, with an…
Mother Musing by Sally Donaldson I am the cruise director on a ship of fools. I organize my motley crew of might-have-beens and should-have-been. They line up at my command and refuse to do anything I tell them. They tease me behind my back and say I’m a sloppy sentimentalist. I am the queen of lists, the laundress, the chief cook and bottle washer, the framer of pictures, the designer of rooms and schedules. Get up, get up you sleepy head, get out, get out of bed or you’ll miss the bus, the deadline, the party, the meeting. You…
Gifts by Patrice Boyer Claeys From Mother: a crystal bowl—sleek sides tapering to weighted base lead-heavy, incised, its clean design bright on the counter. For condiments, she said. Her aim was to emboss time, add pleasure to both guest and host, of which she’d never had enough. For Daughter: a simple cup—carved from the hardwood’s heart, hollowed from old growth trimmed and palmed, smelling of sweet sap. For sorrows, I said, her birthright’s toll. My gesture meant to hold the swells, contain woes, enclose her quicksilver soul. After years in publishing and PR, Patrice Boyer Claeys joined Plumb Line…
Dear Matthew by Brenda Bellinger No doubt this letter has already been opened for you. I’m trying to picture you now, age-progressed since I held you in my arms when you were two months old. You were an adorable baby. Over the years, I’ve had only an unfortunate and distant glimpse or two of you on your path toward adulthood, the last when I read about the events of 2003 that lead to your present circumstances. I’m not sure how clear and complete the picture of your past appears to you nor am I confident that what I’m about…