Batnadiv Ha Karmi Colic After Terence Hayes A writing mother traces her tradition to desperate singing rockers, chanting the sound of footfalls. Shh Shh, shh. Sleep sleep sleep. Hush little sweet. Hush baby hush. Hush brain hush. Hush the mind. Quiet the eyes. No I won’t cry. A raven rustles behind my eyeball. His beak breaks my pupil. Don’t you cry. All the women who muttered nights, mouths full of marbles. They tumble as I speak, glass shards against my teeth. Ping the floor, roll between my feet. One is full of waves. Another holds a cat’s claw. Air bubbles…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Maria Mazziotti Gillan When I Was Still Young I remember getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning, going down to my kitchen and looking out the window at my neighbor’s house or at the moon or at the utter darkness. That was when I could still get out of bed by myself and not need my aide to haul me out of bed like a sack of potatoes. I used to get up in the middle of the night and read and write. Sometimes, when I’m in the little twin bed in the corner of my family…
Mary Fontana Meditation Culminating in a Line From My Son’s Comic Book I suppose I was afraid he wouldn’t read. Wouldn’t be a reader. That we would be strange to each other. When he slept through the night I feared he was dead. When he wobbled on the sidewalk I thought he might teleport eight feet laterally into the murderous street. All his capabilities were a mystery to me. Why not flight? Why not tunnels through the void? When he howled so hard he couldn’t breathe, his face a red contortion, why not suspect some plot to torpedo the…
Tamara J. Madison Awkward Agency/Salient Survival Me: “Good morning, I am traveling to Auburn, New York. I will be reading poems from our family tree in Ms. Harriet Tubman’s church at 5:00 pm this evening in a celebration called FIERCE! #elevatetheancestors #tribewithme” #1 Son: “Good morning love to start the day off with good news have a great time travel safely” Daring Daughter: “OMG! That is HUGE Go mommy REPRESENT” Wash Belly Baby (Son #2): “Pulled up with gang and them. That’s what I’m talking about Ma (5 pairs of “!!” in bold red)” Those were my children’s responses…
Leah Richards Ghost, Mother I went back to the mountains of my childhood because I thought Wichita, with its feral boars and hoof trails cut through whispering prairie, might quiet her. The girl I once was, barefoot on creek bed stones, untamed child of twig-tangled hair, was restless with waiting. She who carried a notebook of poems across rocks and rivers was a ghost in me, a shimmering apparition still stubborn in will. Haunting while I mothered my children. My son came first, always in motion. My veins opened when I saw his face. I felt the ghost stirring.…
Geula Geurts Moon Child “I’m like a moon,” my toddler says. He’s sitting on the toilet, proudly working his tummy. He is newly potty trained, his foray into big boyhood. Oh no, I think, not another in-house poet. “How are you like a moon?” I ask him, smiling. “My face,” he beams and cups his round cheeks in his palms. As my toddler utters his first simile, something in me waxes, then wanes. To be a poet is to make bread out of air, to spin gold from sound. My partner and I make a very modest living (we…
Maggie Cramer and Emily Cramer So(ma)tic Poetry Exercises after CA Conrad This is best with bare feet. Even better naked. Walk from one end of your home to another. It doesn’t matter if the children are awake or asleep. You’re naked, but they’ve seen all that before, known it all intimately. You must have bare feet. Nakedness with slippers on doesn’t count here. As you stroll, your feet will encounter objects. Small beads, old cheerios, bits of bread. Perhaps even a blueberry from breakfast. If you do encounter a blueberry, or fresh fruit of any kind still in its…
Brittany Ackerman Big Splashes, So Big I dream that beetles have infested our home. The meaning of beetles in dreams varies, but some say that dreams about insects in general can indicate a need to be free from anxiety or a lack of control in a person’s life. If a beetle appears in your dreams, it could be a sign that a major change is about to bring positive transformation into your life. In the dream, I take our Dyson vacuum and suck up the beetles one by one. There are hundreds. Each one disappears into the belly of…
Mother / WRITER – Artist Prose Brittany Ackerman, “Big Splashes, So Big” Jennifer Case, “Things People Tell Me When I Write About Motherhood” Maggie Cramer and Emily Cramer, “So(ma)tic Poetry Exercises, after CA Conrad” Derek Davidson, “Medium” Geula Geurts, “Moon Child” Tamara J. Madison, “Awkward Agency/Salient Survival” Melissa Mowry, “Cinderella & I” Leah Richards, “Ghost, Mother” Amy Gallo Ryan, “Water’s Edge” Poetry Sharon Dolin, “Two Questions” Mary Fontana, “Meditation Culminating in a Line From My Son’s Comic Book” Jennifer Garfield, “ghazal for the meadow of my heart” Maria Mazziotti Gillan, “When I Was Still Young” Amy Lee…
Callie Plaxco Aphasia There are whole days that pass without a single thought taking shape into intelligible words. The wind screams and I think perhaps it is a child waking. But the leaves shake and always there are noises that will sound like children. As her grandmother once said, Callie Plaxco flew the coop when she left South Carolina to journey west to the University of Wyoming for her MFA in Creative Writing. Her chapbook Dear Person is available at Dancing Girl Press and individual poems have appeared in Carve Magazine, Tinderbox, SWWIM and Sugar House…