Review by Carla Panciera Although Take Me With You Next Time is Janis Hubschman’s debut collection, the author is no stranger to the literary world. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals and have garnered prizes from the Bellingham Review and Glimmer Train. These are stories about women, most of whom are established in careers and relationships. In fact, they are firmly in the midst of their complicated lives. One such complication involves the men they married: Their husbands are recovering from or succumbing to brain tumors, cancer, dementia, addiction. One has been unfaithful. But the women persist. They…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by W.J. Herbert Renunciation and Embrace in Maurya Simon’s La Sirena The mystical Pacific coupled with the saga of a young girl’s coming-of-age animate La Sirena, a novella in verse by the poet Maurya Simon. The collection, a finalist for the 2023 Vern Rutsala Prize, marries auto-fictional elements with traditional motifs to create a modern riff on a classic 19th century tale. A vibrant contribution to feminist re-castings of myth and fairytale, poems in Simon’s retelling of “The Little Mermaid” employ multiple contemporary voices, but her heroine, richly-textured and magical, is most compelling. More than an adolescent’s awakening…
Review by Anna Rollins Refraction: a review of Cat Pleska’s My Life in Water Cat Pleska’s gorgeous memoir, My Life in Water (Uncollected Press, 2024), begins with a near drowning: her own, at 6 months of age. Her teenage babysitter Norma is not neglectful. Her mistake is a momentary lapse: she steps away from the tub, just briefly, to grab a towel to wrap and warm the freshly bathed baby. In the essay entitled, “Wash Me Clean,” the author observes her own past trauma as third-person spectator: “there, completely underwater, lay the baby, staring wide-eyed up at the…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger Dorinda Wegener’s debut poetry collection, Four Fields, is at once brave and vulnerable. She exposes all aspects of parent/child relationships, with the speaker’s mother, then father, in her richly written poetry. Although approachable, these poems require time to parse and readers may benefit from multiple readings to experience the book completely. Still, Wegener’s words warrant wallowing in for some time. Divided into four parts, there is a metaphor centered in agriculture. Section I focuses on the mother figure, and the relationship between this mother and daughter—including the good, the complicated, and the painful aspects.…
Review by Meghan Sterling Contending with Ghosts: The Tapestry of Place and Loss in Abbie Kiefer’s Certain Shelter A few months ago, a fellow Maine poet reached out to me to ask if I would be willing to read her latest collection, Certain Shelter, thinking my residence in her hometown might be of interest. She was right—reviewing a collection that takes place in the town I now call home was an interesting read. But there was more here than connection to place. I read Abbie Kiefer’s manuscript with recognition and urgency, exploring each poem hungrily. Like Kiefer, I am…
Review by Sharon Tracey Canticle for Remnant Days is Jane C. Miller’s first full-length poetry collection and she has compressed a lifetime within its pages. The poems are a measuring, a looking back and then forward, marking the days, the longing and joy; where loves goes, where it’s raised. Childhood, marriage, children, love, and loss. The self ever changing. The book, divided into four sections of roughly equal length, evoke the seasons and rhythms of change. Many poems are tinged with color and there’s the sensation of a light touch, memory as brushstroke. Time is a star subject and…
MER Open for Submissions for MER Vol. 23 Print Journal and MER Online Quarterly MER – Mom Egg Review is open for submissions. 4/24 – 5/1 Free Early Bird Submissions (until we reach our Submittable limit) 4/24 – 7/15 Regular Submissions ($3) Submit 3 poems or up to 1000 words of fiction or nonfiction. This is an un-themed issue, so any work focused on some aspect of motherhood, mothering, or mothers is welcome. View our guidelines and submit here: https://themomegg.submittable.com/submit We can’t wait to read your best work!
Jacquelyn Grant Brown For Black Mothers Who Can’t Consider Sleep Cuz the World Still Ain’t Safe Enuf Her son makes it home +++safely after the late shift only to find her there +++again, twisted deep into the contour her body has carved permanently into the right corner cushion of the couch from a ritual of waiting up for him. Before the bright orange of morning can come calling on her dusky lights from the den’s TV dance over the tiniest creases in her face, telling details of an angst-filled and laborious life. She wars with her eyelids every late…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Highley Hollay Ghadery, Widow Fantasies, Gordon Hill Press, September 2024, fiction (short stories). The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women. https://www.gordonhillpress.com/products/widow-fantasies Patricia Caspers, The Most Kissed Woman in the World, Kelsay Books, April 2024, poetry. There is so much beauty in Patricia Caspers’ The Most Kissed Woman in the World, and…
Review by Teresa Tumminello Brader Writer and engineer Tara Isabel Zambrano debuted with her flash and short story collection Death, Desire, and Other Destinations from OKAY Donkey Press in 2020. Her second collection Ruined a Little When We Are Born (Dzanc Books, October 2024) arrives swathed in sensuous details—the food, clothing, customs, culture, and gods of India—and sprinkled with the extraordinary and the unusual, all to describe the otherwise most indescribable of human characteristics: emotions and feelings. The sensuality of her writing is—perhaps unsurprisingly, yet it is a rare quality—especially striking in her depictions of sex, the before…