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…
Author: Mom Egg Review
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…
Review by Ellen Miller-Mack – When I was pregnant with my first son, I told a friend who is from Ghana that I was dreaming every night about food. There were fine restaurants where I would order extravagant meals, or visit caves lined with chocolate walls. She held my hands with tears in her eyes—in her culture food dreams meant hunger. I was hungry, but not for food. I craved mindfulness, living inside my body, inside a lush inner landscape which was both mine and not mine. The chocolate cave walls had messages in an ancient language I longed to…
Review by J.P. Howard – Karma’s Footsteps, published by flipped eye publishing (www.flippedeye.net) in 2011, is Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie’s debut collection of poetry. Tallie successfully draws the reader in from the very first poem. The first stanza of the first poem, “Her Voice” (For Dr. Nina Simone), is a powerful mix of visuals, sounds and words placed lovingly and deliberately on the page: bowl of crushed blueberries, knife edge, cracked calabash, heavy truth, ancient wine and renegade bones, rise up white wings of doves, tapestry of nerve, daughter of well-aimed lightning “Her Voice” is a poem-song, a loving tribute to…
Review by Maria Scala – The cover of Cassie Premo Steele’s latest collection of poetry, The Pomegranate Papers, bears the image of a succulent red pomegranate bursting through and staining a page of text from the dictionary. This is an apt way to describe the central theme of this wise and thoughtful collection – motherhood and creativity. One often bleeds into the other, and sometimes with great force. Throughout the book, Premo Steele depicts worlds that both mingle and collide. Early on, in “Walking on the Backs of Whales”, she vividly describes a dream she has the night of her…
Review by Nicelle Davis – I love when poetry incorporates science to broaden the scope of its lyric content—simply put, I love Meredith Trede’s Field Theory. The most striking component of Meredith Trede’s collection Field Theory, is the book’s construction. The title, sections, epigraphs, and poem order all speak the multifaceted study of field theory. Field Theory plays a part in mathematics and Newtonian gravitation. Maybe more importantly for this collection of poetry, Field Theory is also a psychological theory which examines patterns of interaction between the individual and the total field, or environment. The collection as a whole works…
Review by Moira Richards – One chapbook length poem. A song of legend and wit and word/sound play that draws the reader as the tides draw the sea to shore; as mythical Liban and her daughters draw their lovers to themselves. Fishwife tells the tale of the 300-year-young fish woman who, long, long ago, swims to the edge of land in search of a man to love. From that cover of reeds, she took in a bright tenor in a fervor—a man who’d been a bard. … …her old words flowed— an undercurrent foamed over by his verse. A daughter…
Review by Rachael Nevins – In the dozen stories in The Beautiful One Has Come, Suzanne Kamata explores the myriad ways in which we meet the unknown, whether it be an unfamiliar culture or an unexpected role. An expatriate living in Japan with her husband and twins, Kamata brings a generous imagination and heart to her work, which involves both American-born and Japanese characters as well as travel to Cuba, Egypt, Paris, and Australia in addition to the United States and Japan. In several of the stories, American hopes clash with the many constraints of Japanese society. The entertaining “Hawaiian…
Review by Suzanne Kamata – In Tara L. Masih’s story “Suspended,” a woman accidentally drives her car off the road and is saved by a tree: “The old tree somehow knows to hold her just so, and when she focuses again, she finds her car is suspended, engine taking her nowhere.” Stuck in its branches, unable to move her body, she licks condensation from the window in order to survive. By the time she is rescued, she has formed a bond with the tree. The unnamed driver experiences a gamut of emotions – anger, fear, relief, love, joy and grief…