See you in KC! MER NELLE SWWIM Whale Road Review Present Off site. On purpose. The Bauer, 115 W. 18 St. KC Reading at 7. Doors 6:30. A cash bar is available. Featured Readers
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger In her latest poetry collection, Allison Blevins offers myriad perspective on pain, all kinds of pain, through unflinching poem after poem. Cataloging Pain documents physical pain experienced by a disabled body, as well as the pain of motherhood, of love and sex, and of desire. In intimate but inviting language, Blevins allows us to not necessarily experience pain, but to consider it and how the effects it has on the subject in these poems. The first poem, “Cataloguing Pain as Marriage Counseling,” lays the groundwork for the honesty and familiar language throughout the entire…
Review by Nicelle Davis Permit Me to Write My Ending by Rebecca Faulkner begins with a scene of a dying boy seemingly choosing to end his life by plunging into the sea. The poem raises questions about whether suicide is a deliberate choice or a result of circumstances. The closing lines echo the Icarus myth, suggesting the consequences of trying to escape fate will only bring us back to the inedibility of death. The boy’s Converse shoes symbolize makeshift wings as he leaps or falls. The ending lines of this Proem do a good job of preparing for the haunting…
Review by Kelly R. Samuels Some of us collect stones; we line window ledges or fill bowls with them. We often think of them as static, unless moved by another—water, a person, an animal, a machine—or altered in color when wet or shape when worn down. In Willie Lin’s debut poetry collection, Conversation Among Stones, the speaker struggles with whether to remain static and mum like a stone and not give in to recollection: “I barely wanted to go on / Though I tried, as if deciding between” (69). Sleep is equated with the stone. It can be seen…
Review by Linda K. Sienkiewicz “There were herbs in the Waters of Massasauga swamp that could be rendered into medicines for just about every affliction: yarrow and plantain for bleeding wounds, elderberries and boneset for flu, willow bark for fever, and foxglove and dandelion for too much pressure in the body… and if you asked Herself to make a water or tonic to fix you, she would study the veins in your hand and the whites of your eyes while considering what kind of poison to add… Bloodroot? Snakeroot? Rattlesnake venom, if she had it?” (41) The Waters is…
Ibu Robin Lim When Bear was Born Grizzly bears give birth in Winter hibernation. My daughter’s saltwater woke her. Later I thought I saw invisible salamanders coiled around her feet. Back home, in Indonesia, our volcano erupted. I tipped the Ferryman well: turmeric milk, and a batik shawl, very dear, rushing him to row quickly across the river, Pain, for my third born. All her dreams ransomed away in a half heartbeat, when the blood came, when the beating of Bear’s almost born heart slowed, she became more a mother than I ever was. She slipped down, across seven rivers,…
Crystal Karlberg In The New Year My children scatter likes stones and all of last year’s accumulated knowledge is already useless. Extant is a passive way of saying we exist. Once I lost my car in the airport parking lot. What is terminal in Nature? What is the nature of illness? You can bear a burden or bare your soul with all the same letters, but arrangement is everything. My mother knew about flowers, how to bash their stems with the butt of a knife to keep them drinking. Warm water is more enticing to most people, though hot springs…
Come to our Off site Event at AWP with SWWIM, NELLE, and Whale Road Review! Featured Readers MER: DeMisty D. Bellinger, Eileen Cleary, JP Howard, Abby E. Murray, Anna V.Q. Ross NELLE: Melissa Ginsburg, Rachel Richardson, Nicole Callihan, Beth Staples, Francesca Bell SWWIM: Brenda Cárdenas, Silvia Curbelo, Suzanne Frischkorn, Didi Jackson, Kashiana Singh Whale Road Review: Lauren Camp, Kai Coggin, Patricia Davis-Muffet, Kelly Foster Lundquist, Jane Muschenetz Cash bar available. We hope to see you there!
MER at 2024 AWP in Kansas City
MER February Bookshelf Lots of intriguing new and recent books, many from our contributors. Take a look! Morgan Baker Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at Goodbyes (Ten16Press, May 2023; memoir) is about reinventing yourself, learning how to handle loss, and emerging from depression. When Morgan’s daughter, Maggie, left for college and Morgan also parted with nine puppies from a litter the family raised, she collapsed into a deep depression. She was, however, ready when Maggie moved to LA with her boyfriend after graduation. Morgan focused on herself, and her needs. Her identity shifted. Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at…