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…
Author: Mom Egg Review
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…
Interview by Sara Weiss Choose This Now is a novel-in-stories following two friends across twenty years as they grow up, grow apart, and grow together. It is about art, labor, love, pregnancy, and parenthood—and the role of friendship in forging a life. Upstairs, as Soraya gets into a stash of shoes, chewing on a well-used sneaker we really probably didn’t need secondhand, Val says, “You remember—the baby phase was really rough for me. I was so consumed by Berry that I felt like I didn’t even have myself for company. I couldn’t wait for her to go to school, to…
Review by Dayna Patterson Many poets are familiar with Trish Hopkinson, the “selfish poet.” She is not just a supremely skilled poet herself, but a friend to poets, guiding writers as they navigate the complex Poetryverse through her website, trishhopkinson.com. Here, novices and experts alike can find submission tips and tricks, interviews with editors about what they’re looking for, lists of feminist lit mags, chapbook/book contests that don’t charge submission fees, etc., etc. It’s an astonishing collection of poetry resources, generously shared and maintained by Hopkinson. Once in a while, she will tootle her horn, sharing publication news about…
Review by Sara Epstein Suzette Mullen is the founder of Your Story Finder nonfiction book coaching and a founding board member of the Lancaster (PA) LGBTQ+ Coalition. Her “tiny love story,” the seed which became this book, was published in the New York Times “Modern Love” column. This memoir The Only Way Through is Out is Suzette Mullen’s first book. It is her poignant story of coming out as a lesbian in her fifties, when she reckons with having been in love with her best friend (a straight woman) for 18 years. She has been in a safe, comfortable marriage…
Exciting new titles in nonfiction and poetry. Catherine Ricketts The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity. Broadleaf Books, April 16, 2024 This work of literary nonfiction blends memoir with studies of the art and lives of women artists who had children, including Elizabeth Catlett, Alice Neel, Ruth Asawa, Joan Didion, Marilynne Robinson, and Toni Morrison, as well as many emerging contemporary artists. The Mother Artist debunks the myth that to be an artist you must give up a family life, demonstrates the very real challenges facing women who aspire to rise in their disciplines, and explores the uniquely humanizing vision…