Tania Pryputniewicz, The Fertile Source Six years ago when my daughter started preschool, I found companions of heart in other mothers. The director of the preschool hosted a book club in her home, bringing together two of my favorite subjects under one roof: literature and motherhood. Halfway through the year, taking advantage of Poetry magazine’s offer to send out free copies of its yearly Translation issue to bookclubs, I attempted to put poetry on the map for our little group. I also (the teacher in me) passed out a handout of compiled poems which included Thom Gunn’s Baby Song, Brigid…
Author: Mom Egg Review
She Dressed in a Hurry (for Lady Di) A Photo Poem Montage by Tania Pryputniewicz Photography by Robyn Beattie www.robynbeattie.com, Piano, Scriabin Etude, Opus 42#4, Stephen Pryputniewicz Text of Poem, originally published at Salome Magazine http://www.salomemagazine.com/chamber.php?id=301 Recent poetry by Tania Pryputniewicz appeared either in print or on-line at Autumn Sky, Literary Mama, Linebreak, Salome Magazine, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Tiny Lights; new work is forthcoming at The Blood Orange Review. She Dressed in a Hurry, (for Lady Di), belongs to a longer series of poems in progress titled Thirteen Incarnations exploring iconic female personalities including Nefertiti, Ophelia, Joan…
Special Edition, Mom Knees: Editor Marjorie Tesser and The Mom Egg with Nicelle Davis of The Bee’s Knees Blog Marjorie Tesser is editor for Bowery Books, Bob Holman’s independent poetry press, and co-edited the Bowery anthologies Bowery Women: Poems and Estamos Aqui´: Poems by Migrant Farmworkers; she is also editor and publisher of The Mom Egg, a journal. Her poetry manuscript, The Important Thing Is… was the winner of the inaugural Firewheel Chapbook Award, and will be published by Firewheel/Sentence in 2009. She produced Bowery Women: Shoot the Poem!, a videopoetry festival, with assistance from the Center for Experimental Television,…
Nicelle Davis lives in Southern California with her son J.J. Her poems are forthcoming in Broadsided, Front Range, Mosaic, Moulin Review, The New York Quarterly, Offending Adam, Picture Postcard Press, SLAB Magazine, Superficial Flesh, Literary Journal, Two Review, and others. She’d like to acknowledge her poetry family at the University of California, Riverside and Antelope Valley Community College. She runs a free online poetry workshop at The Bees Knees Blog http://nicelledavis.wordpress.com/. Please check out her new poetry adventure through ghost country at http://bodiepoetryproject.wordpress.com/.
My mother and grandmother are on their way to visit. My house is not ready and neither am I. After moving into a “new” ninety-year-old, 3200 square foot, brick house six months ago we still have things in boxes and bags, and this fixer upper is still slowly being fixed up. How I ever expected to be a prolific artist, mother to four and wife to a fine artist is a puzzle I’ve been piecing together for 17½ years. I imagined years ago after peeing on the plastic stick and watching it turn pink that our kids would fall into…
When was your last colonoscopy? the tidy, compact gynecologist inquired, a man so devoid of sexual aura that he can stand fully clothed over your naked spread-eagled body without a hint of inappropriateness. Um, never, I answered as he fondled my breasts, gazing up at the ceiling and missing the fact that I breathe a little harder when nerds touch me, even him. He quickly moved his hand between my legs and downward. OK, Miss Never, he answered, the funniest thing he has said in the ten years I have been seeing him, I have plans for you. First time I’ve…
Hope springs eternal –Alexander Pope The question of hope. Who carries the hope in the family? My old friend Tal who lost her son in a botched surgery says, “If you don’t have hope, you have nothing.” Sophie broke her leg one summer about two years ago, either during or just after a seizure. She was standing with her babysitter, Mirtha, in the park when it happened. Mirtha is experienced with Sophie and knows what to do when she starts to have a seizure, but this one was awkward. Mirtha had to protect Sophie from falling and simultaneously lower…
It takes months for me to find a good therapist. When I finally do she tells me my family is too “enmeshed.” As if I didn’t know this already. Still, I try the label on for size. I use it as a ruler, measuring where I’m at, always in relation to my mother. But all measurements and calculations are more complicated now. I am the oldest of four children and my younger sister Jorelle has been in a car wreck. The gash in her head is sewn shut by the emergency room doctor but she lays in a coma for…
Because our son, Benjamin, is already four years old, because we’re not sure if there are going to be other babies, and because we don’t know just how to explain this to him, after midnight, we’re pulled to his bedroom, just to check on him, just to make sure he hasn’t kicked his blankets onto the floor. It is winter and a blue moon hangs heavy over our tree tops, sturdy oak and maple, bare branches covered with the season’s first snow. We find him content and full of dreams, Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” coming over the…
The hardest thing I’ve ever done is be a single mother. It saps almost everything and takes the rest—your energy, time, creativity, hope, and . . . did I say energy? Parenting is hard work. Single parenting is hard work x 100. You get by on little hugs and kisses and gifts of pebbles and growth milestones and that utterly contagious, spontaneous child’s giggle. Writing space shrinks dramatically. I count myself very lucky to have two books coming out within a year of each other. But this is a totally new accomplishment, and reflects the way my life is being…