Mary Fontana Delivered —an instant late we look where the gulls have gathered, shrieking, the shredded knot now drawing open, its center red and wet, the just-calved creature anonymous already, one more newborn on the seal-tiled beach: a stone heaved bodily from hush to honk and squall, to crush, to quarry, a vessel wrecked on earth— and struck like bells our hearts swing on their rope as an auction block of beaks carves up the afterbirth Mary Fontana is the author of Strangers in the Province of Joy, a narrative history of migration across the US-Mexico border. Her writing has…
Author: Mom Egg Review
MR Sheffield 1-800-PREGNANT WOMAN i. we’re told pregnant women are greeting cards diffuse glow filtered lighting soft amber reality is lacework electrified nerve endings but don’t say that aloud images require careful curation a museum of pregnant ladies smoothing shea butter over tight skin hello do you want this nevermind ii. the blood and the amniotic fluid and the shit and the vernix and the meconium and the IV and the stitches and the catheter and the infections and the slow slow healing some women say they’re up and walking around Target the next day that very…
Therese Gleason Some Defining Moments in Several Instances of Conception, Gestation and Birth: A (Personal) History To conceive (verb) 1. become pregnant with (a child) The first time I got pregnant on the first try. It was almost mystical; I peed on the stick at dawn on the fifth anniversary of my father’s death, crying when the second line materialized, bright pink. The second time took months. Diagnosis: luteal phase defect, my menstrual cycle too short, womb shedding its nest too soon for a fertilized egg to implant. I took Clomid, which caused chemically induced mood swings but didn’t…
Sian Maciejowski Where All Seas Are the Same I’m standing at the edge again. From inside me comes salt, a cry, a wingbeat too soft to name. There is no answer, only the return of morning. Two women hover beside me— one with the ache of milk, the other with her hands still empty. Both are me. A baby bird totters toward the foam, its small feet learning risk, its mouth full of sky. How can something so new already belong to the wind? Behind me, the ghosts of women who never turned back fold their towels, smooth the…
Evie Calvillo 3-body problem the [problem] is [predicting] the motions of 3 bodies (such as stars or planets) mutually attracted by gravity given their initial positions and velocities – Montgomery oOo we are 3 bodies in a single system not planets not stars not satellites only mother & child & child ++++++O +++o ++++++++++++++o 3 interacting bodies 3 different forces that push & pull to give & to take & to take liquid gold sunlight’s reflection moonlight milk I observe with an astronomer’s wonder without an astronomer’s patience I accumulate data I attempt to predict the unpredictable…
Samantha Strong Murphey thaw the first thing she did was math / the baby will be born with the magnolia blooms / the chicks / the thaw of her last decade / and she liked the idea of becoming a mother / in the spring / she sat in the bathtub at 5 a.m. listening to the thunder / contractions strong enough to keep her awake / she’d trained her mind / proofed her house / lived on poetry / and she liked the idea of becoming a mother in a storm / they walked all day in…
Susie Meserve Borealis Drought-dry afternoon, just past two, California sun licking at shadows, I paused by the door as the Russians do to rest on the suitcase, account for every last thing— passport, tickets, lipstick, suppositories, Valium, Prednisone— before I caught the train, boarded the plane, accepted a little bottle of red from a flight attendant with a British accent, and I was dreaming of being at home with my husband and son, not on a solo journey to claim one last embryo from Europe, when the woman in the middle seat jostled my arm and gasped look— —and…
Hannah Faith Notess Viviparity I watched my body fail silently as if from a great distance. Time to admit those months I hadn’t created anything of note, I was just existing like the mammal that I am damp and diurnal, doing its ritual. Just read anybody’s birth story online. There was pain and blood and probably beeping but I wanted to be more than a vessel. Also I wanted to be less than a vessel. I wanted to be the monitor at the back of the room, beeping regularly, the screen no one was watching. I wanted what everyone…
Dayna Patterson Groundhog Day It’s Groundhog Day, again, and so: grandmother’s birthday, Candlemas, 2/2, my youngest child’s original due date. She surprised us by arriving a month early, yellowish, as if her skin had been rubbed all over with dandelions. Pink and polleny. Dent de lion, French for lion’s tooth. Grundsau, Pennsylvania Dutch for groundhog. Every year, I watch the movie: Phil Connors, the weatherman, living the same day on repeat, stuck in eternal winter. Long ago, in Germany, villagers watched for the bear’s emerging. If he stayed out of his hole, they knew it would be an early spring.…
Lisa Ludden Perry Blue Hours, the NICU -After and grateful for “Blue Hour” by Carolyn Forché Time is a clutching longing. Breathing deep into my hands like breath on a cold day, I saw something close to breath assembled, a body constructing itself—you. Your form, sudden, slight, underdeveloped, unfinished—what does it mean to be a finished body? Are we ever more than clusters of air and cells? Air, clutched like a fist, molecules sifting through fingers, circling this concrete blue of a room, meandering blue, this pause in time. A pump thrusts your chest up. Hold. Drop. Scrape. Monitors…