Winter Baby Tell me the truth, I said to my friend, who had just given birth. How bad is it? You won’t believe the blood, she said, for which truth, I am indebted. And January, especially, is no time for something so bloody, so replete with fluid. But there you were staring up at me, wondering,what happens next? Nights, as you nursed (I decided never to refuse you), I read a novel where one character is castrated, one loses his legs to infection, another throws himself in front of a train. A different friend, also a mother, recommended this book…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Teaching as a Form of Self-Care I slept straight through election night. The next morning after learning the results I called my youngest daughter before her father took her to school. She’s a sensitive child; the kind of sensitive we don’t see often in the world anymore. I did not want to tell her that her candidate lost the election, but I didn’t want her to hear it from anyone else. As she processed my words, I heard her choke up. The more she tried to fight her tears, the harder she sobbed and when I asked why she was…
Sunflowers Just inside the gate, the rise and fall of dying sunflowers: disheveled petals and downcast eyes. Then a flick of wing and I realize a sparrow is locked in a kiss of life, face deep in the flower’s, seed by seed, stripping her beauty. Lines Written on the Election of 2016 The light inside is broken, but I still work: Sign taped to a broken soft drink machine. Soon, a meme: All of us facing the New Year. Now the newly crowned Emperor, Louis XIV- arrayed. Before light breaks he’s graffitied every last wall surrounding Pompeii. Jean…
Ten Self-Care Tips It was cold and dark when I left, but I had no choice. If I was going to hear even a whisper of my own thoughts, let solitude massage my attitude, and feel my shoulders release while I finally got to let go of what I’d been holding in, worrying over, if I was going to celebrate, give thanks and laugh on paper, if I was going to walk my path with clarity, I needed space. I needed to leave my husband and three daughters at home and get to my favorite place to write. This was…
return to the bush the women in the pink kitty hats need to go get their cousins. the apocalypse now crew has been selected to the run the country and it was not done by our hands. we have carried the weight of america’s decisions on our backs & in our wombs from the moment we stepped off the boat onto this land whose only goal was to devour us & our children. we haven’t sat down since we wet-nursed george washington’s children & built the white house. we haven’t stopped walking since mama harriet’s first journey into the forest…
Unplug, Rest, Be Grateful Self -care, a term we often associate with eating right, exercising and living righteously but if we really dig deep, self-care involves more than that. Although it sounds easy it is one of the most difficult things to do, especially for us women. By nature, we are nurturers, therefore everyone comes before us. Self-care is all about balance which is a very difficult quest to attain in life but not impossible. All we need to do is say no at times, unplug, listen to our bodies, embrace the quietness around us, stay still, breath and inhale.…
To Satya From Satya February 15, 2017 Before I left home for the last day of the writers’ conference, I placed the blank cards, the heart stickers, the 18 envelopes and the list of first grade kids’ names on the dining table. We made a sample card early in the morning, even before my daughter ate her cereal. We went through each step: fold the paper in half, place the large felt heart sticker on the cover, write “Happy Valentine’s Day” and “Love, Satya” on the inside, and then write the classmate’s name on the envelope. I passed along these…
Review by Anne Britting Oleson “For in that sleep…what dreams may come,” said Hamlet. He was speaking of death, but in Katie Manning’s new collection, Tasty Other, many of the poems stem from the way the hopes, fears, and hormones of pregnancy make themselves known through our subconscious and our dreamscapes. It’s the fear of the unknown: will I be a good mother? Will my baby be a boy or girl? Will my child be “normal” (whatever that means)? Manning’s poems channel some of the answers a mother-to-be might wake up with, answers which are by turn hilarious, frightening,…
Review by Julia Lisella I’m not a fan of found poetry, so it was with some apprehension that I read the prefatory note by the author of this brief collection that “All of the poems in this volume are sourced from the dialogue transcripts of the documentary Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles 1976), and are spoken by either Edith Bouvier ‘Big Edie’ Beale or her daughter, Edie ‘Little Edie’ Beale. The transcripts appear in the book Grey Gardens by Sara and Rebekah Maysles (Free News Projects 2010).” My dislike and suspicion isn’t fueled by a belief that found poetry…
Review by Margaret Rozga Award-winning poet Jane Satterfield’s fourth collection Apocalypse Mix differs in range, tone, and form from the Biblical apocalypse in the Book of Revelation. Satterfield does not use the epistolary form. Nor does she concentrate on punishment, plague upon plague, and separation of good from evil. Apocalypse Mix is more diffuse and layered. The apocalyptic seems rooted in the chaos and destruction caused by war, whether past or present, experienced directly or indirectly. Most often it startles by its juxtaposition with the comfortably familiar. Sometimes it is so tucked into routine daily life as to almost disappear.…