Introducing Mom Egg Review 16 – MOTHERS WORK MOTHERS PLAY This issue of Mom Egg Review looks at PLAY and WORK through the lens of motherhood. Celebrated and emerging literary writers explore the following themes: The work of mothering, of creating art, of office work, housework, school work, political work, physical labor. Life’s work. Work that’s respected and work that’s denigrated. Jobs that lift you up and jobs that suck your soul. Our mothers’ and fathers’ work. The work of nurture. Work for pay, work for love, work for duty. Working on ourselves and working on our kids or on…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Please Join Us for a Launch Party June 2! Mom Egg Review Vol. 16 Launch and Reading Sat. June 2 2018 3 to 5 PM (Doors at 2:45) Poets House 10 River Terrace, New York, NY 10282 Advance Admission $16 (includes a one-year subscription to MER) Contributors to the issue will participate in a “lightning style” reading of one poem or prose piece or excerpt (3 minutes per reader). TICKETS Advance ticket link: https://merliterary.com/product/launch-party-ticket/ Once you purchase your ticket, please fill out this form for your subscription address. https://themomegg.wufoo.com/forms/z1e29pb80if61mk/
MER VOX Quarterly – Spring 2018 Feast your eyes on fabulous poems and art! Body Image A Poetry Folio Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Featured Poets: Kathleen Aguero Kirun Kapur Jill McDonough Michelle Reale Tina Kelley Dawn Paul Virginia Chase Sutton In The Gallery Art by Sarah Lightman Mothers Are Making Art Rajaa Paixão and Gwen North Reiss
For women body image can be fraught with conflict and cognitive dissonance. We are inundated with body images from the advertising and media world that are not representative of the full spectrum of womanhood … that don’t reflect the changes our bodies experience, not only as a result of pregnancy and childbirth, but of disease, disability, aging and more. This can make us feel less than and make it extremely challenging to achieve and maintain body positivity. The Mom Egg Review March VOX folio offers you poems that explore our relationship with body image, as well as poems that consider…
Dawn Paul VEINS My mother lies on her back on the big double bed lifts her right leg, straightens it, pumps her foot. See how swollen my ankle gets? Her ankle is smooth, shiny scribbled with thin red veins. She lifts the left leg, her pajama leg droops. I wish I had nice legs. Her legs are lumpy with bulging blue veins that twist and double-back on themselves like a range of rounded hills. My legs didn’t always look like this. I am eight. Her legs have always looked like this. They are my mother’s legs, her varicose veins, her…
Virginia Chase Sutton CONSTELLATIONS On the skin inside my upper arms are galaxies of bruises, some as fresh as this morning, one or two for each day when Mother inspects to see if I’ve lost weight. I haven’t. She pinches me, hard. I stick to my diet she says, twirling the skirt of her new blue shirtwaist dress. You must as well. The flesh of my inner arms aches and I hide them by holding my breath and my contusions close to my body. I’m not allowed to eat much. My slender sister has no worries, could pirouette in…
Kathleen Aguero SELF-PORTRAIT AS A GERANIUM Here’s all I’ve got: one showy cluster of red blossoms, fancy hat on a scrawny neck rising above bare stems and gently ruffled leaves with their dark inner border, peach fuzz. Leggy, untrimmed, I’m Americana Red in a green plastic pot, a scatter of brown blooms dusts the soil beneath me. I know how I must look straining toward the window close enough to kiss it, better yet tap out, break through. Look at me. Let me out. Look at me. Let me out. Petals weighing nothing. SELF-PORTRAIT AS AN EMPTY BOAT Water licking…
Michelle Reale THIS YEAR MY SORROW DROWNS ITSELF This year my sorrow drowns itself. I can’t be responsible anymore. Here is where I’m at: you’ve nailed my hair to the floorboards, and I lay quiet, all shallow breathing like certain death. You claim to see the shadow of a dowager’s hump and fiddle with a fragile bone at the base of my neck. You predicted a distance between us while you filled the air with the ghosts of other bodies you have seen, those you have feigned affection for. Was it a dream when you claimed extreme deficiency, ugliness…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett Woolsey and Lee are well-qualified for this undertaking. Woolsey parents four children (one set of triplets) in Northern California and blogs at The Hip Mothership about raising multiples and general parenting topics; and is additionally widely published. So, too, is Lee, who works at home in Malaysia parenting four (one set of twins). Their combined publication list is extensive. This collection of writings is remarkable for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that the two women live half-way around the world from one another. Yet their partnership reads like a close friendship,…
Paintings Making Art, Not Babies. (2017) oil on canvas Painting Outgrowth (2017) oil on canvas Tiger Mum (2017) charcoal on paper Buoyancy Aid (2017) oil on canvas Video Eggs (And God Remember Sarah, Genesis 21:1) (2013) video animation. Sarah Lightman Artist Statement I am endlessly fascinated by the autobiographical project: how to visually portray, through texts and images, lived experience and complex feelings. Since my undergraduate at The Slade School of Art (1995-2001) I have been making a graphic novel of my life formed of hundreds of pencil diary drawings, The Book of Sarah (Myriad Editions 2019). I have…