Elisabeth Weiss Lost Mother Beautiful one of long ago who knelt with us when the house filled with a veiled peace useless to resist, when we knew the smell of your dress in the folds of sleep, in and out of consciousness, a blurred coupling of hands when kissed. Wherever you are, under tiled roofs I remember you and I remember loneliness under the chestnut tree as we all grew in it’s crooked shadow. I imagine you old around the eyes, looking bored, piling white papers in the kitchen as if you were there voluntarily. We all know how…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Dede Cummings Day Hike —for Sierra The snowshoe hare tracks have no trouble telling us the way. Our breath is hard and fast startling even the gnarled branches from their slumber. The etched mountain does not beckon from afar: rather its seat of glory defies gravity on a trail such as this we edge carefully over ice and our grippers secure the way. Never fearing to fall the urge to tell this child my story comes hard and fast, a claw mark on a beech tree with the delicate leaves still and kind. Moving around the forest daily, I am…
Dawn Paul My Life as a Dog The boy with his crooked tooth, his dying mother, her face like a haggard angel, the scruffy, scratching dog. The boy and I astonished and sickened to watch the kindly farmwife jerk the skin off a rabbit in one quick yank “taking off his pajamas.” I remember only that and the scene that ran through the boy’s memory like a newsreel: him on hands and knees, cavorting for his mother bare feet kicking up puffs of sand a headstand turned somersault while she watched, threw her head back and laughed. Yes. There…
Megan Merchant Fallout Shelter “Multiple-vortex tornadoes can appear as a family of swirls circling a common center, or they may be completely obscured by condensation, dust, and debris, appearing to be a single funnel.” New World Encyclopedia Hideaway bunkered into earth, where bodies shelter when the skyline cyclones and upturns machinery, anything not root-locked into the field, the updraft—an opera quivering glass to the breaking point. A phrase my own mother used because she hated cooking, would fury-whisk the batter slamming sides of the bowl, her hands outlier-bruised, dots of dough spattering like a stammer, squaring off against wind. She…
These craft pieces are the direct result of a new collaboration between Continuing and Professional Studies (CPS) of The City College of New York (CCNY) and Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS). Our Interactive Poetry Workshop “From Page to Stage: Everyone Has a Story to Tell–What’s Yours?” was facilitated by JP Howard (Salon Curator), Keisha-Gaye Anderson, Jacqueline Johnson and Heather Archibald. All of our instructors are published authors, Salon members, as well as CCNY MFA or MA alum and one graduating CCNY MFA student. Our four-part workshop employed various writing prompts on a wide variety of poetic themes and…
Calls for Submissions – “Nasty Women” From Deena November and Nina S. Padolf Staghorn Poetry Series is putting together Nasty Woman & Bad Hombre Anthology to be published by Lascaux Editions in the summer of 2017! This anthology seeks poetry, creative non-fiction essays, short stories and art that address reactions to the election. A gofundme page for publication/printing costs has been established. All proceeds will be donated to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Pittsburgh Women’s Shelter and The Art House in Homewood. Please send 1-3 poems or up to 5 pages prose and a brief bio to [email protected] Submission deadline now extended…
Susan Rich My Mother Returns From the Dead to Appear on Oprah ~ after January O’Neil She will say that silence was my favorite response more than sure, why, of course, or yes. She will say she never understood me as if she’d given birth to a dromedary or a quail. My mother returns to her moment of fame to say, and then she refused to eat meat. That some years I’d lock myself in my room come out only for snacks, then go right back inside. She will say I was secretive like a spy, a double agent,…
Begin with a free-writing exercise of the plot of the narrative. After reading what you have written. Circle or highlight the areas of the story that you think are poignant. Next, create short haiku-like verses for each of the areas you have identified. (You can also write couplets or single lines.) Make sure that you choose strong action verbs and rich words which conjure up the emotions that you would like to infuse into your poem. Create images that appeal to the senses, for example, “The sun kicked heat in our faces” or “Daylight like a fine fan spread from…
This piece explores using family photos and other personal items as a way to enter poems. Writers can use journals, family photos, oral histories and/or a combination of the above as writing prompts to enter poems. Questions that often come up when using photos or oral histories to enter our poem, include: Whose story are we telling? How important is it that our poems be historically accurate? When do we give ourselves permission to honestly write our painful stories? What family secrets are waiting to be written? Is this our story to tell? You can use family photos, personal journals,…
Poets and Performance Whether you are doing a performance of your poems or reading them – you the poet want to present your poems as best you can. Right? What does that mean? Once a friend who was a jazz singer did a rehearsal of her performance. She arrived late, and sang looking out of a window- bored and distracted with her own performance. I posed a question to her – if you do not care about your performance why would an audience want to listen to you? Many poets treat the performance or reading of their poems as an…