I did eight loads of laundry. I paid the bills. I cleaned the house. I filled out medical forms. My hair was pulled up in a haphazard top knot. My outfit consisted of waterproof track pants and a thermal shirt. I hadn’t brushed my teeth – my definition of being a “good” Mom. My ninth grade son called to say he was bringing two friends home to play Wii. Could they stay for Friday night dinner? I defrosted hamburgers from the freezer. My seventh grade daughter said that she’d be taking the subway to get to a downtown slumber party.…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Once, a few years ago – I think I was around eight at the time – I was in this foster home and the woman there – Barb was her name – promised to read me the entire set of Little House on the Prairie books. My mom Anna was trying to get clean again and she would come visit me on Sundays. I would cry every time she left. Not that I was happy with her. I wasn’t happy anywhere. It was the overwhelming uncertainty of it all. How long until I was back with her? How long until…
You have trained your restless haunches for eight months now, within me, growing by skull and brow, ribs and toes—simple kicks and I contain the world. An oak tree’s tangled loin inhales, a scratch of breath drawn over bark and knots. The exhalation rides the limbs, slides over leaves to shake an acorn free—it strikes the grass and gasps. A lover gasps within a woman, shakes a stigma to the floor—she asks for more. Lava gropes volcanic slopes to harden and expand them, and everywhere explosions rock the world. A bomb begets a swaddling cloth, a baby’s cry mushroom-clouds the…
I drive across the Henry Hudson Bridge and get off the parkway at Dyckman Street, an exit I have always associated with my mother but never taken before. It is mid-August, blue-skied and not too hot, and my mother is spending a long weekend with Paul and me. Our outing this afternoon is to drive through Inwood, the section of northern Manhattan where her family lived for eight years when my mother was between the ages of two and ten. In an old black-and-white photograph I have of her from those years, taken on the sidewalk of a New York…
I believe in Literary Citizenship. I really do. I believe in it in caps, as you see. To me this term has meant writing and sharing my literature, as well as advocating for literature through attending and creating literary festivals/conferences/readings. Case in point, I’m part of an extremely active committee for the 2011 Massachusetts Poetry Festival—happening May 13-14th right here in my little, slightly wackadoo but lovely nonetheless, tourist town of Salem, Mass.—and the organizing has really been kicking my butt. I co-direct a performance series as well (and adjunct, and mother two kidlings, and workout, and am a wifey…
MamaBlogger365 – Mother-Centric Lit by Marjorie Tesser on the Museum of Motherhood Blog I edit a publication called The Mom Egg, an annual literary collection of poetry, fiction, creative prose and art. The Mom Egg publishes works by “mothers about everything, and everyone about mothers and motherhood.” Why is a mother-centric literary publication important? The demands, pleasures, and monopolization of time and mental energy of motherhood can be overwhelming. How does this affect us as artists? Creative mothers need a welcoming venue that fosters artistic expression. While the media tends to homogenize mothers into broad classifications (soccer moms, tiger moms,…
These are the rules regarding glitter. Listen up. The glitter has been placed in view but out of reach. This is deliberate. The “glitter tray,” the cardboard box originally designated for shaking and shining, is no longer available to you. Technically, it is not a tray if you decide to ride it down the stairs. More like a sled. No, that doesn’t mean you can go sledding in the house. No, I don’t think it’s cute that you left a shiny trail. No, I don’t like slugs. Yes, Mr. Dyson is a very good British vacuum, but every appliance has…
“Your Mom Has A Rockin’ Bod”. That’s what the handsome surfer looking dude told my eleven- and seven- year old daughters about me – their forty-eight year old mother. It was December 2004. Seven months after my husband said he wanted a divorce. Five Months After He Moved Out. Four months after a Palm Springs Hotel offered me an irresistible package deal for a Christmas stay. Three months after I looked up an old boyfriend David… who happened to be living in Palm Springs. Ten minutes after being in the hotel hot tub in an unusually cold California December. The…
Tilda Swinton made small talk as we strolled through quiet, cobbled streets to the door of her garden apartment. We followed her in, my husband and I, and were met by a tortoise-shell cat. A decorative railing marked off a section of the main room raised like a stage she might perform on for a room full of guests, or for no one at all, for herself alone. Were we rude to have barged in? She seemed not to mind; she kept talking as she kicked off her shoes and flung her shawl on an easy chair. The smell of…
Amongst the things I did not realize about having four children was the fact that there’d be so much stuff to manage. I’m not even talking about the doctors’ appointments or school forms (there are those, too, groaning to-do lists’ worth). I’m talking about physical objects. I’m not a terribly orderly person. Here I need clothing for each child—and must shepherd clothing from the first to the next to the next and so on. We are playing with a baby doll stroller and games I have no idea how to play. We are in the land of Itsy Bitsy Spider…