Review by Teresa Tumminello Brader Hollay Ghadery is the author of a memoir, Fuse, recipient of a Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir; a collection of poetry, Rebellion Box; and, most recently, a short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies (Gordon Hill Press, September 2024). In eighty-three pages, and with a gorgeous cover, the latter contains more than thirty stories of female fantasizing as a response and release to the frustration and rage at existing in a world of suppression. In fewer than three pages, the first story sets the tone, accommodating anger with humor and pathos. The unnamed first-person narrator is a…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Dorsía Smith Silva My daughter is the wolf of me moonhowls my four-legged desires into rivers of lupine flower & alpha star hunts down fears nesting in hunter sniffs lumps of green to thirst caribou bloats on stars’ colostrum like extra moonlight marvel at her wilderness unwhittled which mirrors my own same anthem combing through trees same trots of desire unbending to night’s stubby clouds rain whisks us to den darkness circled into tree trunks slow-downed blood gets a season we curve to a lick Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), poetry editor of The Hopper, and Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. She…
Dianne Silvestri For My Son About to Become a Father One birthday before you stood taller than I, I gave you a telescope, fawn legs hinged, black nose and an eye, assembly instructions folded in the box. Twice we coaxed it out to the driveway, aimed the barrel skyward, twisted the eyepiece, squinted, gasped at Mars, Venus, orbs so shy they flew from view. Today that dusty derrick on stilts bows in your old bedroom, a gift you never begged for. I longed for you to probe the heavens, find the universe amazing. Now I hope you will carry…
Gianna Russo Locket & Altar The moon is waxing or waning— whatever. It’s been seven years, the bare kitchen table set to remember. She’s in the dog star, ++++++she’s with the great bear. Some nights she’s waiting behind a door. She’s a girl with a thirties smile. She’s phlox in a crystal vase. The prayer candle, Mother and Child, ++++++silver forks, Thanksgiving plates. She’s the wrist watch with its black bonnet. A filigree of ashes ++++++sealed in my locket. Gianna Russo is the inaugural Wordsmith of The City of Tampa. She is the author of All I See…
Carla Panciera Incantations I liked the name Rose for a daughter. Rose quartz, in the hands of the right carver might yield a six-rayed star from an inclusion. I was pregnant and had begun to read things like tombstones and movie credits for ideas. Considered naming her Ruby. Pigeon blood is the most valuable ruby, and I liked that name, too. For a gemstone. But then I miscarried and had enough red. Our first daughter was born in July. Had I called her to me, suggested a portal? We chose another name, a bloodless one. Named our middle daughter…
Deborah Leipziger Dear Moon If I could untether your lunar sentence, your alphabet, what would you say? Am I the only one listening to your lunar cadence, awaiting your language of light? When I was little, I thought you were God watching over my breath, my silver sleep. Illuminate the tunnels where the captives are hidden. Do not forget our babies in incubators, struggling to breathe. Help us to encode your light, your phases to create a cuneiform of sky, hieroglyph of light. Guide the warblers, thrushes, and buntings, all night’s migrants, crossing the inky dark. Teach us the…
Cynthia Marie Hoffman 12 Moon Funeral I am vacationing in the county of doors. On the third floor, my bedroom door opens to the night, a black room where a vinyl record plays the call of an owl. I have this recurring dream I’m stuck in a stairwell where the hatch above my head is too small to squeeze through. Today, I climbed the spiral staircase in the lighthouse tower. I had to squeeze through the hole in the floor of the lantern room. Far below, waves banged their heads on the rocky shore. My baby was stuck for…
Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach In her poem, “Postlude,” J.L. Conrad writes, “I avoid horoscopes because / I do not want to know how it will all end.” The poems in this September folio—the month of the autumnal equinox—examine how we look to the sky, to the stars, and to old lore, for transformation, for protection, and for those answers in that sometimes-terrifying cosmology of motherhood. Moons, stars, cauldrons, gemstones, crystal, mirrors: these are the tools the poets use for divination, for divinity. Ajanaé Dawkins’ lines in “How to Witness a Miracle Without Converting,” create incantatory sounds,…
J.L. Conrad Postlude ++++++or, last things first He is born in the year the world is supposed to end. I avoid horoscopes because I do not want to know how it will all turn out. Pain centers itself in the spine. Toes wind and unwind. The back arches. There is a tendency to remove oneself from the site of trauma, to speak of oneself as another. A wet cloth on the forehead. On the television—is this possible?—a crackling fire. When we leave the room, there are towels on the floor, water in the tub, white sheets tangled on the…
How to Witness a Miracle Without Converting Ajanaé Dawkins My mother swapped prayer for sharp screams when my sister crowned. The epidural settled on one side until the nerves in her left hip became stars, dying down the dark of her thigh. At 17, I watched a girl- child emerge covered in only-God-can- name. Maybe, blood-light. Star-vein. Water- sky. A boneless sea creature who knows some- thing about the universe sitting next to ours. I don’t want to go back nor do I want to die this way—making daughters. My body has a tenure of chaos and blood. It’s…