The Girl in the Apartment Below As the train whistled past the lonely road, She stood still. The stale neon lights illumined the plastic smile on her lips. Her burdened shoulder drooped. Yet, she waved. She was all but ten. I got a glimpse of her sorrow beneath, I blinked, and she was gone. Why didn’t I share my journey with her? She was all but ten. –Srividya Kannan Ramachandran Srividya Kannan Ramachandran is an artist based in New York, NY. She was born in Pondicherry, India and has lived and worked in 14 cities.…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Gluttony Moves In to Stay The mother worries and hovers, pecking things. Brings a slimming duvet, toes to nose. Daughter’s eyes skitter, blink Morse code: what did you bring? What is she hungry for? What does she want? Siblings and neighbors ask through a cracked door. Answer: Whole birds, wheat fields of bread, fruit, ripe to rotten, fish, smoked, other-world crimson. Daughter sneaks things to eat, pens to scribble. Writes her autobiography on tissue paper, used napkins, paper plates. Soon burned by the keepers in rusty barrels. Fire eternal, high flame, smolders peaty earth. Pop psychology, short for popular always…
Second November Two years alive without you day into night somehow winds a life. Day into night in rooms where women are dying where Mrs. Richman waits for the scary angel to come, that last doctor who says no, I don’t think you’re going to make it this time. She waits for her sons to come visit the same ages we were twenty eight and twenty nine, old enough to lose their mother. In rooms where women die and bring life invoking your name into my face mask I pray you’re proud of me I wonder if I’ll ever be…
The Mother I kept them close when they were young. The boys could roam as far as the mulberry in Schiozzi’s yard qnd the empty lot by the East River. They’d wrestle in the grass, send spitballs across the dinner table, wear me down with bicker and clash. Over the years, threads unraveled. The oldest yanked himself loose. The second unfurled without a ripple. The third untangled silent as stone, sliding out the side door without goodbye. Strands slipped away, like rope paying out through a sailor’s palm. Now these boys have come home men. Home again to sail Dad’s…
What Mother Means Clara Lemlich young Ukranian immigrant gave a Yiddish speech I’ve Got Something to Say after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 20,000 immigrant women all joined to make a union all those women at last night’s Clara Lemlich awards women in their eighties nineties hundreds still fighting still taking care of us all I have always looked for mother figures. Of course I had a mother. She tried in her way. I wanted a different kind of mother a different mother. Warmer, braver, standing on picket lines, not so afraid of what anyone might say, even the neighbor. When…
Octogenarian Sips Glass Half-Full When I walk down the street, a stream of smiles rolls towards me like a school of rainbow fish. I guess I must wear quite a grin. My style’s just Carpe diem – blow and make a wish! Look honey, when you’re my age, each day’s breath should get its own bright candle, wax and all. How many people celebrate the death of old ex-husband’s lovers? Have a ball. Most difficult about living alone? Convincing people that if I don’t go to Saturday night toothless Bingo – so? Well what the hell’s the difference? Leave me…
Poets discuss their experiences participating in the “Seeking Your Voice” writing workshop and in “The Mother Dispossessed” project: Srividya Kannan Ramachandran feels that the workshop has improved her writing and helped her develop a better appreciation for poetry. She believes that this nurturing group of people made working on “The Mother Dispossessed” project fun and deeply moving at the same time. Elisabeth Frischauf – A member of the workshop for many years, she credits the group with unearthing her own voice, as well as developing a refined sensibility for other poets’ works through the study of past and contemporary…
We Women Three “Oh no,” my daughter and I gulped in unison as we saw the slack elastic of my mother’s folded underpants. Stained blouse fronts, gaps of stitching in side seams of thirty-five year old dresses run out of time. She thrilled to sew the delicate florals. Repaired while she could still see struggling with the lousy later generation plastic Singer made who knows where 40th anniversary present from her husband, the engineer. He believed in brand, stuck-in-time. We plunged into the closed society of just the two of them. Emptied her side of the dresser. Went to GAP,…
Note: A version of this photo was exhibited at the ‘Nasty Women’ exhibit at The Knockdown Center in Queens NY Jan. 2017. It was also multiple signage at NYC and Denver and SF Women’s Marches Jan. 21, 2017 GUARDIAN: All who identify as mothers have spent millennia protecting what we hold fiercely dear – Refuse Resist Repeat. Holly Anderson has been anthologized in Up is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, Wreckage of Reason II: An Anthology of XXperimental Women Writers.The Night She Slept With A Bear will be available in 2017 as an LP from the…
A GUARDIAN protects us, and turned around and inward, is what we must protect. Laura Von Rosk earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY at Purchase. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally in both solo and group shows. Her awards include a New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship; an Individual Artist Support Grant from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation; an artist Fellowship Grant from the Bernheim Foundation in Clermont, KY; and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Centrum, WA; Dorland Arts Colony, CA; NY…