An afternoon curling around us, not my house nor yours for tea– we sit in a borrowed mansion, the two grantees—one a painter trying to stop nomads from running. the other a writer talking about eyes, how they show what is being looked at. And as if we met in an another time each describes her mother’s frailty, lips, hair, the stories we tell being theirs. Now with respect for the afternoon pause we plan to walk past the falls in Vermont singing our children’s names, Donna, Peter, Mary, Donna, Peter, Mary, Donna… Rosaly DeMaios Roffman, IUP Professor Emerita, still…
Author: Mom Egg Review
In the midst of slicing onions, the poet Receives a message from her Kitchen Witch In almost-iambic-pentameter. Anxiously she searches for paper and pencil Before the elusive language Falls away like the peel. While she scribbles a furious shorthand, A piece of onion sticks to the page; Vapors cloud her eyes. She plunges her pencil into the onion And takes another stab at the poem. Rosalie Calabrese is a native New Yorker and management consultant for the arts. In addition to press releases and poetry, she writes short stories and books and lyrics for musicals. Her work has appeared in…
“Mommy!” “Don’t step in the paint!” “Mommy, look – look!” “Shhhh. I’m working.” …. right in the middle… Lost the line, color’s mud. “Alright, what?” Ow, too sharp! “Never mind.” “Whoa. OK. Where’s Margie, isn’t she taking care of you? “ (Got to find another sitter, no, never.. what am I gonna do?”) “Don’t you want to go find Margie? I’ll be done soon.” “No.” Out he flickers out he flies. Unidentified Flying Child. “OK, I stopped. What are you trying to show me? You know when I’m working, you have to pretend I’m not here.” “You’re wearing a invisibility…
Summer already and too hot, time for movement, blowing left or right even, if forward is too much to ask, hips shifting, knees flexed like basketball players, ankle-breakers, fast and then gone, a going somewhere, not just out, but an affirmative heading in the direction of, and this is moving and this moving is like victory and victory means a finding, a found, a there, a discovery, an opening to knowing. It’s not just about pleasure now. It’s not about the damp, veined carrot dipped in raw almond butter, the sound of the bite, smooth-bumpy chewing, sweet double-dipping of one…
Review by Katie Manning – Butterflies Under a Japanese Moon is the sort of poetry collection that should come with a warning label. WARNING: This book will suck you in and force you to read it straight through in one sitting. WARNING: This book will cause you to order two more copies immediately to give as gifts to friends. WARNING: This book will send you out to read more haiku and more Japanese history and folk tales. Consider yourself warned. This collection is not what it appears to be on the surface. The cover is subdued with pastel flowers and…
Seven years ago, we left our Upper West Side co-op for many reasons. My husband needed a driveway. My toddler deserved a bedroom with windows. I had to get out of the kitchen — that narrow room, where, cramped in a window nook, I spent my days writing. As Virginia Woolf said, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I don’t write fiction, but I can say that Woolf, that champion of women’s rights, was spot on. Without getting into the money part (that’s for another day), there’s a point when…
Review by Nancy Gerber – Reading Tsaurah Litzky’s newest collection of poems, Cleaning the Duck, is like partaking of a sumptuous feast, with words that are juicy, tender, salty, piquant. When I finished reading I was stuffed, but I wanted more. The title poem contains many of the themes that simmer throughout this book: desire, loss, pleasure, lust, sorrow, loneliness. “Cleaning the Duck” is both ode and elegy, a celebration of living, a bowing before death, and an acknowledgement of all the beauty and messiness we encounter on the journey: then with the knife I cut the chest, separated the…
Review by Ramona McCallum The Voices Rise – Reading Virginia Bell’s From the Belly, I felt a sort of indulgent, almost guilty thrill, akin to eavesdropping on purpose to the various conversations that wrap around me in a public place, like in a crowded line somewhere or an auditorium before a concert. Bell’s poems rise to the eye and ear with intensity and distinction, in both style and voice. They take turns speaking openly, as people do in everyday life, about memories, health concerns, jogging through the city, and the multitude of routes our relationships take. The reader gleans a…
Review by Amy Watkins – Heterotopia, according to philosophers, is a real or imagined place of escape, transformation or reflection. If I tell you that the Heterotopia of Lesley Wheeler’s prize-winning poetry collection is Liverpool, England, the setting of her mother’s childhood, you will likely expect a book of nostalgic musings, but that’s not the book Wheeler has written. It is a book about memory and language, about what is remembered, forgotten or repressed, but rather than reflective elegies or escapist reminiscences, the poems in Heterotopia are clear-eyed, specific and transformative artifacts. Take for example “Sunday Afternoon in Liverpool, 1950,”…