Mama needed a ride home from work so I went for her. As I was pulling out of the lot behind the grocery store where she was a clerk in the deli, I said, “We gotta stop somewhere; Ray wants some cigarettes.” Mama turned and looked out the side window. Had she heard me? Maybe I didn’t say anything. I’d kept my voice low, tried to keep the words even like we were ordinary, but maybe I only imagined myself speaking. “How you know?” she asked. “He called me. Said if I was picking you up to get him some…
Author: Mom Egg Review
There are Mothers of Invention, Motherlodes, Holy Mothers, Mother #%*!-ers & Mother tongues. We give birth to a child, a book, a business venture or a song. We are born, reborn & born again. While the umbilical cord that connected us to our mothers may be recalled only by the depression in the middle of our bellies, the unseen cords to “Mother’s Energy” seem unbreakable, uncut-able, and pulse content-rich for an entire lifetime. Just ask anyone with even a modicum of experience in psychotherapy or perhaps a knowledge of literature. It would stand to reason then that one’s relationship (actual…
Mom Egg contributor RH Douglas passed away last week. Cheryl Boyce Taylor writes of her, “She was a brave Warrior/Poet/Trini/Mother-Woman-Wildness. Say a prayer for her peace and safe travel.” In Rodlyn’s memory, we are re-printing a poem of hers originally published on our Myspace blog in May,2008. Benediction by R.H. Douglas The Sun is warm here My heart opens To its rays. Salt water sprays my face. Grit washed away. I leave the excited city, A chiseled world, To find my soul in the ocean’s rhythms. Bless me Mother. Mother of the deep You who do not sleep. Do…
My fifth grader thinks she’s slick when we are getting ready for school, that if her lip gloss is subtly applied, or combined with a lighter shade, I won’t notice her slightly rosier lips as we are heading out the door. I could tell Selena to wipe it off. I am her mother after all, but I pick my battles, and there is my own relationship to lip products. At seven, I was obsessed with Maybelline’s Kissing Potion in Strawberry, which was as sweet and sticky as it was shiny. I couldn’t lick my lips fast enough once it was…
This story does not have an ending, I am unfolding as a mother, as a writer, as a friend, as a wife, as a daughter and as an individual every moment. There are things that no woman tells another about motherhood. I will tell you this: I died. It was not childbirth. My labors were long and hard and beautiful. I have given birth twice: once to a screaming soul who shattered my idealistic visions of motherhood, the second time to an infant so ancient she didn’t utter a sound as she was lifted by the midwife from the water…
A girl finds out something new about her mother’s second husband. A teenager succumbs to the lure of adventure on a Haitian night. A non-observant grandmother attempts to explain a religious holiday to a child. A grown man fails to replicate his mother’s recipe. A self-righteous teacher’s poisonous attitude pervades a classroom. Strengths emerge after a child’s dire diagnosis, a difficult divorce, the death of a parent. This issue of The Mom Egg is our first theme issue, on the subject of “Lessons”. It was inspired, in part, by a spoken word/performance piece by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and RH Douglas, “Home…
I’ve been birthing a collection of poems about raising a gay daughter since she came out at fifteen. That was four years ago. I didn’t realize I was writing a collection on this theme but my role as mother had shifted and I had to find a way to explore my feelings about Mollie (my girl) and what was happening inside myself. As I wrote and lived my relationship with my daughter, this art of documenting my experience also expanded into a political/feminist role as I fought for gay rights, GENDA laws and protecting gay children in schools. It has…
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…
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,…