I love having a belly full of babies. There are two in there, a boy and a girl, and my body gets busy making them arms and legs and hearts. I leave my job a few months early, supposedly to sit on my porch swing and sip lemonade. Instead, I give birth early, and no one can stop it. I hide from my boss a few months later. I’m at the grocery store, and I don’t want her to see that I’m not pregnant anymore. I don’t want to say the words out loud. That would make them real. I…
Author: Mom Egg Review
I brought our daughter with us to the last nursing home. Both her grandmothers were there to help me figure out the next step on our path. She was only five and we’ve been in these type of situations since she was three and her father was diagnosed with a Stage Four brain tumor. We were all horrified by the rotting smell and industrial hallways. Clearly, this wasn’t the way to go. “I think it’s time to bring him home.” my mother-in-law whispered. The anvil melted away from my heart. My deep sigh contained a trace of the tears that…
The Mom Egg at M.O.M. Conference The Mom Egg At the Museum of Motherhood Featuring: Holly Anderson Robyn Art Rosalie Calabrese Carla Carlson Stephanie Feuer Alana Free Theta Pavis Jayne Pierce Ana Silva Ekere Tallie MC Marjorie Tesser http://themomegg.com Monday, May 7, 2012
Life begins in water. Here, on the gravel beach, where the shifting tides rock clattering pebbles forward and back in their arms, and the murmuring sea whispers lullabies in our ears, I watched you. You were silver and grey like the sea. Stooped over. One hand curving sideways, shucking smooth skittering pebbles out to sea. The cliff’s arms encircled us. We ambled together, embraced, then pulled apart. Solid to liquid. I walked with my head bent downwards, scanning the gravelled earth for a mottled rock shot with rust, or a limpet shell, curved like a pregnant belly and all the…
I have lost twenty-four pounds. Most of it seemingly from my breasts. “They are like teenage breasts,” my husband says. He quickly adds, “That’s a compliment.” I have my doubts. Why do the breasts go before the potbelly? Yet that, too, has shrunk. I pull on my old jeans and look down at myself with amazement. Where did I go? Where did my new-mother-full-blooming-woman-body go? Am I a girl again? Someone at work says, “You dropped a lot of weight!” I resist an impulse to look around my feet for something fallen. Where have I dropped it? Where has fifteen…
Reviewed by Carol Dorf – Although it is “difficult to get the news from poems” Amy King’s poetry helps the reader notice and pay attention to what is essential. Her poetry juxtaposes disparate aspects of personal history, social context and language providing the reader with more complex understandings of our lives. The second poem in I Want to Make You Safe, “Follow the Leader of my Silken Teeth,” provides the reader with an understanding of King’s ars poetica, while referring to the art of Janet Cardiff. The poem begins, “And suddenly, art is a hand planted from the wrist/down into…
The Mom Egg at Mass PoFest THE MOM EGG AT MASSACHUSETTS POETRY FESTIVAL Saturday, April 21st, 1:30-2:30 PM at The Gathering, Salem, MA Featured Readers: MARIE GAUTHIER, JENNIFER JEAN, COLLEEN MICHAELS , JANUARY GILL O’NEIL, NANCY VONA, MC –MARJORIE TESSER Click to reserve your spot http://masspoetry2012.crowdvine.com/talks/25462 Saturday, April 21, 2012
The language of motherhood isn’t equipped with words to express and the lack of control one feels about having a sick child. When I think of Homer’s poem – each island rising up from the flat surface of the page, like paper mache islands decorated with paint and sequins – the landscape of that journey is so real I can touch it. My son Max and I were shipwrecked together for 2 ½ years on a succession of islands where we met whatever monsters fate could dream up. From the moment he was born, his breath came in thin, rattling…
The Mom Egg 2012 Launch Party & Reading The Mom Egg Spring Reading & Launch Party Celebrating the release of The Mom Egg 2012 Vol. 10 THE BODY Contributors will read from the new issue. Sunday, April 15th 6-8 p.m. Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia Street NYC 212-989-9319 $7 admission includes food or drink credit Sunday, April 15, 2012
Hand tempera paintings of New York City sewer systems, an unripe plum, mass of potential cells, bundled and bursting to expand, mitosis ready, to form organs and limbs. Paintings of flowers, and empty soil beds swollen breasts, remembering peri-bottles, the chill white tile, exposed pipes and gray grout, I wrap it in toilet tissue, set it on the tub edge sensing an importance, but then worry someone might stop by and need to use the bathroom, or Yosef, before I tell him, I put it in the bowl and flush. Lost. And a sliver of skin sent for chromosome testing…