From The Mom Egg Vol. 12 – 2014 Fay Chiang REINVENTION The fall comes The daughter leaves for Spain with her partner to teach English and then travel North Africa and the Mediterranean— happy and healthy and young my heart urges them: Go! with great joy Twenty years surviving the breast cancer I was so afraid would not let me see my four year old girl grow up and now only after her graduation from college do I realize how long I have held my breath As the eldest I took care of my father when he had colon cancer…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Estelle Bruno was already in her 80’s when she began contributing work to Mom Egg. Her work was known for its economy and wit. She passed away in Oct. 2017. Here is a poem from The Mom Egg Vol.6. Estelle Bruno Hug a Tree, Lola “Hug a tree, Lola,” I said explaining that the tree would be responsive— it would lower its branches and hug her back. But Lola chose the wrong tree, its trunk large, rigid and unyielding. Her arms reached only half way around. She never got the warm response.
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen In The Short List of Certainties, Lois Roma-Deeley compels the reader to open her eyes and witness the beauty of life. Life is after all the only sacred thing we have and to miss any of it is to miss love itself. It is not by chance that Roma-Deeley uses an epigraph that demands we read hope into life’s darkest corners. The epigraph reads: “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”…
Review by Tessara Dudley As part of a year-long series of chapbooks about humankind’s relationship to animals, poet Nicelle Davis and illustrator Cheryl Gross have collaborated on this entry, which explores the precarious place of elephants in the world of today. According to the publisher, Elephants “makes the leap that killing elephants marks the death of humanity … something of empathy and love dies with these sentinel beings.” The opening poem asks, “do you know there’ll soon be no / more elephants?” (3). This question follows the reader through the book, imploring the reader to pay attention to the…
Review by Margie Shaheed While reading Mandatory Evacuation Zone I was drawn in by the lush journey that spans generations to familiar and unfamiliar places. I take liberty and use the word places here figuratively as well as literally because through the use of memoir these poems tackle such life issues as grief, loss, chronic illness, growing old and divorce. My favorite poems were those set against the back drop of New York City where “pedestrians start moving before the walk signal even flashes.” (94) Mandatory Evacuation Zone has a political edge. We find that many of the poems…
Review by Judy Swann Andrea Potos is obsessed with John Keats, as she says in “Verse Virtual.” So it feels natural to see her cite from his letters in “Morning of my 56th Birthday,” the opening poem of her chapbook Arrows of Light: The first thing that strikes me on hearing a misfortune having befalled another is: Well it cannot be helped — he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit (11) This is how the poet comforts herself and accepts that fact of her mother’s radiation therapy: …he will aim one perfect…
Review by Jennifer Martelli In her poem “Number Four,” Heather Sullivan writes I would hang there, pinioning wildly, clawing for ledge or outstretched root, something to help gain purchase . . . . Coming home from work your shadow joins them when they greet me at the front door. (1) Sullivan’s debut poetry collection, Waiting for an Answer, strikes that delicate balance between the past and the present, life and death. Whether lamenting a child never born while mourning her own mother or examining the scars of an absent, abusive father while maintaining a marriage that engenders safety, Sullivan masterfully…
The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 24th edition of this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA October, 2017 Art by Elisabeth Schön Words by Judy Swann Art by Elisabeth Schön The postpartum period is a surreal time and space that can hurt or heal a woman but either way she’ll never forget it with her in body in…
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen The final poem in Margaret Rozga’s book of poems Pestiferous Questions titled “Why Jessie?” warns, “History is a timeline / Those who do not know history / leave it lying underfoot / We trip on it again and again” (117). These lines predict a pestiferous thorn in our collective side and Rozga extracts the sharp encumbrance, delicately placing it under a near-blinding magnifying glass. As individuals in a society that has always been multicultural (to the chagrin of white nationalists who have made their stubborn persistence violently and recently known), it seems, as readers, we…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett It becomes quickly apparent that Tina Kelley is quite at home as parent, journalist, and poet. Her themes are as familiar as family, thorny as politics, clever as language, and as varied as the many sources from which she draws inspiration. Her years reporting for the New York Times (where she shared in a Pulitzer for 9/11 coverage) honed her taste for delving into the heart of things, directly and deeply. That she has also won awards for her poetry is not surprising. Her observations of everything from the daily to the spiritual weave…