Sometimes I raise my hand to brush the curl from the left side of my face but it is only a new squiggle of blood floating in the vitreous of my remaining eye. Sometimes I remember you saying Mama, I will be your eyes let me help you in this dark. I brushed away your little hand not wanting to burden you with my lack. Now I wish I had let you lead. Sometimes I feel you lurking behind me in the kitchen I turn, call your name aloud only your cat, Coconut, answers. *Named for Celtic Goddess of Fire…
Author: Mom Egg Review
“It’s Time”… Perhaps the phrase You whispered in my Father’s ear When you were Ready to conceive me. “It’s Time” Your water breaks, I was born. “It’s Time” You let my hand go And I walked my first steps. “It’s Time” When you knew your Marriage was over and You had to leave. “It’s Time” You combed my pig tails Straightened my uniform and Dropped me off My first day of school. “It’s Time” You let go of the Training wheels I was still learning to ride my bike. “It’s Time” You gave me permission To wear red lipstick When…
You sat on the table at Sears, your dress of baby pink frilling around your feet; your hair with ribbons decked—a one-year-old princess with a scowl—and nothing that we said or did made you smile. The finished print revealed your act of resistance: fingers pressing firmly, painfully on the table to keep your smile at bay. I laughed, pleased that you were a girl who won’t be pressured into smiles. But the web of rejection grew, first went dresses, all the pinks and bows. No girl tops with straps. I shopped boys’ racks, and when the mohawk came, I slowly…
To Mom She slouches in the chair whose alarm will screech when she gets up. “What is this?” she shouts indignant that this has happened- the chair, the bad food, the hospital bed, eighty-nine years of living and now her hands- bruised walnuts- can’t crack open enough to hold a spoon. Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department, where she directs the Poetry Outreach Center. Poetry collections include: Remembering Fireflies and Secrets of Sheets (Plain View Press); The Bonsai Curator and Van Gogh’s Ear; (Cervena Barva Press), Daring Daughter/Defiant Dreams (A Gathering of Tribes) and The Plagiarist (Dos Madres Press). Several…
No matter when you’re born you will be whipped in the sand storm of seismic colonies colliding by their dividing and parching the earth to bury life denying any evidence of our presence And there is nothing to do but endure it because this world will always be two halves of the same misery even when pleasure is the center of your breathless desires the axe of duality is swinging back to sever your head But as I said before: We don’t dwell here We will never do well here in this colosseum of the ravenous blind whose destiny it…
Poems Curated by J.P. Howard We are women writers, many of us are members of Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon(WWBPS) or long-time supporters of the Salon. We are diverse and multi-generational; many of us are women of color and a number of us are LGBTQ writers. We are community. Writing is a bond we share, sometimes the act of writing our truths saves our lives. We are all daughters, many of us are mothers, some of us are nurturers and our stories are sometimes complicated, often painful, but always necessary. SAY/MIRROR, my debut collection of poetry, published…
Author’s Note by Dana Bowman – It took a wedding, two babies, and a funeral to help me understand that I needed to get sober. How I survive parenting while in recovery is another story (xi). BOTTLED: A MOM’S GUIDE TO EARLY RECOVERY is my sincere and often hilarious memoir that travels with me through the pain of addiction to alcohol, and my recovery, all with small children in tow. Some would say getting sober while parenting two boys under two years of age is impossible. I would not only argue that, but offer the hope that, yes,…
Review by Margaret Fieland – This is a book comprised largely of letters addressed “Dear Continuum”, directed to emerging poets who will carry on the work of poetry and social activism. It contains six sections: an introduction, the nineteen letters, two essays, one about being a mother and the other about the death of poet Amiri Baraka, Notes, References, and Gratitude. The letters are addressed to younger poets about author Mariahdessa Ekere Tallie’s approach to writing, about what writing means to her, about the place of poetry in the world and in her life, about creativity and what she does…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett Come out here. So I dried my hands. This opening of the first poem stopped me in my tracks with the breath-holding immediacy of this familiar phrase, even as it compelled me into the poem. And into the book, this introductory moment, or ‘Interlude,’ being a portent of moments to come. What existed in a blink between two people now exists for the rest of us forever. Not only because the poet took the time to write it down, but more, because she took the time to allow the experience in the first place. Such…