Mothers Respond – A folio edited by Cindy Veach and Jennifer Martelli The poems in this folio explore how we, as mothers, have responded to the seismic changes over the past few months: are we or our children at risk? how do we explain this new year of division or loss? do we face these challenges as opportunities? Each of the poems in this folio gives voice to navigating this tumultuous world. In Amy Strauss Friedman’s poem, “Aleppo,” the speaker states, Every soul needs a proper chaperone/to say nothing of a champion. This fine-line of the mother-as-poet, the mother-as-protector, the…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Post-Inauguration Because our candidate—the woman—didn’t win. Because my son is in 7th grade and kids can be cruel. Because my son is biracial, I did not have the right words when he came home and told me that some kids said he would be deported, chanted Build the Wall as he walked down the hall. They were joking. They didn’t mean it. My son laughed. Shrugged it off. For a moment, I imagined the red lockers of middle school were listening, the post-War cement bricks and beige tile bearing witness. My son is not me, won’t make a fist if…
Icarus Takes a Window Seat Your voice on the phone carries a rattle of beverage carts, seatbelts snapping, and the frenzied beating of your heart as you wait for the door to close and trap you. I would like to say the words to help you soar in “friendly skies” but you’ve been talking to Icarus and Bellerophon. You three boys know with certainty the hubris of flight. Who am I to contradict you? Bellerophon fallen from winged Pegasus and Icarus blistered in ecstatic wings. From then to now millennia of cautionary tales speak doom to those who fly, and…
HOW TO SURVIVE A DICTATOR → Call your mother-in-law who lived through the Third Reich. She may tell you to keep a chicken, collect firewood from the graveyard, or burn the stamp collection for warmth. All of these are valid. → Brush up on Russian curse words. → Never, ever have his name in your mouth. It is not worthy of your tongue or lungs & will cancer the air around you. → Understand nothing will be easy. Understand nothing is normal. → Find a way to forgive a family member’s vote. Note: this may…
Poem for the New Year My daughter said she would go outside her comfort zone, would pull the string on a booze-bottle popper. When her hands didn’t burn, she popped another. Said she’d try harder at school, listen in History. I guess I was going out of my comfort zone, too, letting her watch the video of the liberation of Dachau— a woman on her knees, kissing the arms of a soldier, weeping, a man lifting a corpse by the leg like a piece of scrap metal. I tell her as a child I unraveled the streamers that fell from…
Instructions for Motherhood Gut the herring. Cover your body in ash. Thorn with the blood that grows from the roses. Layer dirty linens with hot water and lye. Beat the caustic bleach that forms. Seed the ingredients for medicines and food. Clean away dandruff and lice. Stir a broth of beet. Soothe a raucous child. Catch the train that runs an hour behind. Calm the cross winds. Quiet rough storms. Ache for months in your elbows and knees. Make of kitchen twine an innerscape of lace. Stew beans in a pot until they soften. Add tarragon and coriander and rosemary…
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…
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…