Amy Lee Seahorses everyone assured you how you will feel better after the water breaks. but no one told you about the third-degree tearing, the brain fogs, the Mummy’s wrist which prevented you from holding your own baby. now, you wished you were a female seahorse instead – for male seahorses give birth. Amy Lee is a lawyer based in Seattle. She holds a BA (Govt)/LLB, UQ, a LLM from The University of Melbourne. She is the Managing Editor of Quail Bell Magazine, a NYC based progressive feminist digital platform. Her work has been published in Canada, UK,…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Natasha Herring To Bake a Black Boy Natasha Herring is a storyteller and former director at the Peabody Award-winning organization StoryCorps. She was an Artbridge, Kimbilio, and VONA Fellow. Her work has been seen or published at the Present Power Future Hope exhibition, Medium’s Middle Pause, P.S. I Love You, Oyedrum, Operating System 30/30/30, Promethean, and other publications. Back to THE WAY WE WERE
Elizabeth Hutchinson Arborvitae Christmas is over. All day it rained and now as the sun is setting, the first fat flakes of snow. Your fever is spiking again. All night the fire inside you raged darkened, flared again. You woke at one and two and three and four, woke and nursed woke and nursed, woke and vomited until you and me and the bedspread were covered in greasy white curds. Outside the arborvitae tree of life, sustainer of weary travelers is covered in a thin white veil. A loose string of multicolored lights keeps hurling itself against the side…
Caridad Moro-Gronlier For My 21-Year-Old Son, Who Calls Me on The Day Roe V. Wade is Overturned It’s not the ding of a text that comes in but the trill of his ringtone, Landslide, favorite song I refashioned into a lullaby, every note a link on the chain of nights that were ours alone, the childhood score I sang on repeat that he no longer asks for. I don’t hesitate to answer, though we’ve been locked in battle over boundaries and definitions, a ping-pong match of contranyms— how fast means firmly affixed, not just swift flight; how buckle means…
Rebecca Brock Mixed Tapes Is the question, what holds us? Or is the question, what do we hold? In one sitting, my son plays me REM, The Cocteau Twins, Death Grips, Johnny Cash, MF Doom—he pivots genres, eras with his phone and finger tips, plays snatches of an album to explain it, to show the whole arc of an artist and then shifts again without context of time, place, politic beyond his own. 1990’s era Janet Jackson followed by The Velvet Underground. Overwhelmed, I try to explain the mixed tape, the hours of listening to the radio, to songs…
Rachel Becker Flirting in 23B Oh there were unsuitable men even before your body became alien & ecstatic with children, a bread basket, doughy homily but now you are thirty something (married, suitably) & you haven’t flown alone since your kids were born, & yet here you are, in 23B on a flight to DC, sipping gin & remembering how to flirt. Turns out it’s muscle memory. Turns out there’s a heat wave between your seats. Your knees touch. It’s economy, after all. You swipe your phone & show him your kids, their gummy grins & say their names,…
Erin Armstrong Learning Language ear’ago, Mummy my coffee mug, half filled goes into little hands too big, she takes the handle, tips it, sloshes coffee into the living room carpet ear’ago, Mummy. She smiles tilting the cup toward my crotch. I say thank you because she brought me my coffee that’s half on the floor. I’m supposed to teach her to give to others, but she has no grasp, no grip, no ability to hold lukewarm coffee—my third cup. Today was an early wake-up day. It’s black outside even the stars have disappeared. Extinguished are the mornings where I…
Selections from Girlfriend Girlfriend is a collection of poetic prose short-shorts about my relationships with girl and women friends from childhood through my present elder years. When I showed my esteemed yoga teacher Genny Kapuler what I had written about her, she said, “I feel honored to be one of the beads in the Mala, one of your sisters.” I like to think about it like that, as a meditation, as a string of beads. Included are friends, family, teachers, mentors and certain women authors and characters who were meaningful to me at important moments and turning points in my life.…
Monique Islam Above, “Jackie Pregnant With Luna” Below, “Mom and Leilani in Stroller at Swapmeet” Monique Islam is a queer Chicanx/Bangladeshi American visual artist, educator, and community organizer, born in South El Monte, CA and currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She has organized various art exhibits/lectures around the country centered around immigration/inclusion/intersection in the arts initiatives. Islam plays an active role in her community as an educator, organizer, and storyteller. She is currently organizing the monthly photography community lecture series, Brooklyn Photography Talk.
Susan Calvillo Poetry Comics –expecting mother These poetry comics are excerpted from a memoir-in-verse, Twindemic: – expecting mother – to gain everything – who was I? – are you okay? – perfection Susan Calvillo is a Chinese/Mexican-American and a dead-on-her-feet mother of twins. Her writing appears in the Audacious Women Anthology, Nightmare, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and other charming magazines. She enjoys adding books to her already insurmountable TBR list, and if not reading, she is likely dancing or obsessing over desserts. The most embarrassing evidence of these acts can be viewed on TikTok @beardlessbard or…