Vicki Iorio The S-Trap After rescuing my daughter’s beheaded bobbing Barbie heads from my toilet’s S-trap, Dave, the plumber, tells me he’s really an artist. We sit at my kitchen table scarred with glitter and science project stickers. He draws my profile on a piece of notebook paper with broken crayons. I emerge from the blues and pinks; a dash of orange for my regrets. I tell him I’m really a poet, not a housewife. Hungry, I offer him sardines, the only food left in my cupboard. He turns the key with the skill of a surgeon. We are…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Katie Kalisz First Book I want to bury the boxes of books in the yard, somewhere the dog can’t dig them up. I want to do it while it’s raining so the pages get soaked, the ink bleeds out of the words, the pages return to their purity. But it is winter. The ground is frozen. I have missed my chance. Instead, this book becomes another child to nurse through the cold season, through the risk of flu and other epidemics, under the constant gray sky. Something else I must tend and nourish. Something else to lug around town…
Cathy Cultice Lentes Red Pens I’m grown now a survivor of childhood and motherhood my own children growing going gone but when I give my aging parents my new poem freshly published needing to hear words like wonderful clever miracle child I see two old school teachers glasses hooked on the ends of their noses red pens poised. Cathy Cultice Lentes is a poet, essayist, and children’s writer; author of the poetry chapbook, Getting the Mail (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and coauthor of the epistolary poetry collection, Stronger When We Touch (The Orchard Street Press, 2023). Cultice Lentes…
Allison Mei-Li I Don’t Want to Write a Poem After Isabelle Correa I want to birth a poem coax it to life under a full moon, screaming swaddle a poem in muslin cloth stay up all night watching its chest rise let it make me crazy I want to feed a poem my milk and blood til I have nothing left to call my own I want to bathe a poem bend and bruise myself for a poem cradle its soft spot in my open hands I want to let a poem leave me before I’m ready watch…
Angela Sucich Fourth Trimester iPhone Poet Note: This poem is displayed as an image, in order to preserve formatting. Angela Sucich holds a PhD in Medieval Literature. Her poetry chapbook, Illuminated Creatures (Finishing Line Press) won the 2022 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition and other recognitions. She was honorably mentioned for the 2021 Pablo Neruda Prize and the 2020 Francine Ringold Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, SWWIM and RHINO, and in the anthology From the Waist Down: the Body…
Tina Kelley I Used to Write Love Poems Remember how in college we tired of workshopping all those “I’ve been to Paris” poems? Then my father died and I wrote dead father poems, never wanted to be that poet, but suddenly was. Then unrequited love poems, then requited love poems, then required love poems, and then yes! The kids were adorable, they spawned many poems, until they started saying things just to get into my poems. Now they’re older, and smell worse, and head lice and concussions and soccer are less poetic than nursing. And then my mother got…
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…
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…