Jacquelyn Grant Brown For Black Mothers Who Can’t Consider Sleep Cuz the World Still Ain’t Safe Enuf Her son makes it home +++safely after the late shift only to find her there +++again, twisted deep into the contour her body has carved permanently into the right corner cushion of the couch from a ritual of waiting up for him. Before the bright orange of morning can come calling on her dusky lights from the den’s TV dance over the tiniest creases in her face, telling details of an angst-filled and laborious life. She wars with her eyelids every late…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Curated by Melissa Joplin Highley Hollay Ghadery, Widow Fantasies, Gordon Hill Press, September 2024, fiction (short stories). The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women. https://www.gordonhillpress.com/products/widow-fantasies Patricia Caspers, The Most Kissed Woman in the World, Kelsay Books, April 2024, poetry. There is so much beauty in Patricia Caspers’ The Most Kissed Woman in the World, and…
Review by Teresa Tumminello Brader Writer and engineer Tara Isabel Zambrano debuted with her flash and short story collection Death, Desire, and Other Destinations from OKAY Donkey Press in 2020. Her second collection Ruined a Little When We Are Born (Dzanc Books, October 2024) arrives swathed in sensuous details—the food, clothing, customs, culture, and gods of India—and sprinkled with the extraordinary and the unusual, all to describe the otherwise most indescribable of human characteristics: emotions and feelings. The sensuality of her writing is—perhaps unsurprisingly, yet it is a rare quality—especially striking in her depictions of sex, the before…
Review by Margaret Sáraco Genevieve Betts’ second poetry book, A New Kind of Tongue, follows her debut, An Unwalled City (Prolific Press). Betts, an assistant professor of English at Sante Fe Community College, also teaches creative writing for Arcadia University’s low residency MFA program in Glenside, PA. The author takes us on a journey transitioning from living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to her new home in Sante Fe, New Mexico. It is no small task to move from New York to Arizona with her family, but this is only part of her story as she searches for understanding in…
Review by Diane Gottlieb No one would accuse Rachel Zimmerman of burying the lede. Here’s how she starts “Widow,” chapter one of her riveting memoir Us After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide: If I were writing a news story, I’d start like this: On July 1, 2014, Seth Teller, MIT professor and father of two, parked his crimson Honda Insight on the Tobin Bridge, three miles from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and jumped to his death (5). A former journalist, Zimmerman knows the importance of providing the facts—up front. As a memoirist,…
Review by Janet McCann Theophany is an encounter with a deity that manifests in an observable and tangible form. These encounters are described in many religious texts and are part of the spiritual life. In this work, glimpses into the spiritual dimension define a distinctive angle of vision. Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies, which was selected as the Editors’ Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A Djanikian Scholar, Stadler Fellow, a 2022-23 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University, and winner of the 2022 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, she has published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, and…
Review by Emily Webber Jessica E. Johnson’s memoir, Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Making Home, revisits her unique childhood during the 1970s and 1980s. Through her mother’s letters, written during Johnson’s childhood, Mettlework beautifully interweaves her mother’s journey with her own. Johnson examines how people continuously discover new versions of themselves and others and how the idea of home changes as people enter different stages of life. Shortly after Johnson had her first child, she received an email from her mother with scanned photographs and two letters written by her mother in 1979 and 1980. Eventually, her mother shares…
MER Quarterly June 2024 Spotlight on our print issue, MER 22 – Ages/Stages Watch the Launch Reading on our @merliterary YouTube Channel. MER 22 Ages/Stages Issue Launch Reading Sunday, June 9, 2024 READERS Allison Blevins, Anne Graue, Barbara Henning, Cheliss Thayer, Christine Jones, Heather Sweeney, Heidi Seaborn, Hilary King Juan Pablo Mobili, Kali Lightfoot, Karla Daly, Laurel Benjamin, Lois Roma-Deeley, Lydia Gwyn, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Megan Merchant Meghan Miraglia, Natalie Solmer, Paulette Guerin, Robin Dellabough, Sarah Browning, Susan Michele Coronel, Tina Barry HOSTS Cindy Veach, Jennifer Martelli, Marjorie Tesser VIRTUAL PROGRAM EXCERPTS…
Selections from MER 22 POETRY FICTION PROSE Get the issue: Print Issue – $18 ($15 with coupon code “STAGES”) PDF Copy – $5
MER vol. 22 Ages/Stages Issue Launch Reading Sunday June 9th, 6 PM EDT Watch the reading on our @merliterary YouTube channel Get the print issue here Get the PDF issue here Hosted by Cindy Veach, Jennifer Martelli, and Marjorie Tesser Readers: Allison Blevins, Anne Graue, Barbara Henning, Cheliss Thayer, Christine Jones, Heather Sweeney, Heidi Seaborn, Hilary King, Juan Pablo Mobili, Kali Lightfoot, Karla Daly, Laurel Benjamin, Lois Roma-Deeley, Lydia Gwyn, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Megan Merchant, Meghan Miraglia, Natalie Solmer, Paulette Guerin, Robin Dellabough, Sarah Browning, Susan Michele Coronel, Tina Barry Reader Bios Allison Blevins is the queer disabled…