Sailing With Lucille by J.E. Sills ++++++”may the tide ++++++that is entering even now ++++++the lip of our understanding ++++++carry you out ++++++beyond the face of fear” ++++++Blessing the Boats ++++++– Lucille Clifton (1937-2010) This poem you learn has the power of time travel. It arrives later in your life but stirs up those old Philadelphia days when your little life was happening and those storm clouds that threatened. It’s the late-1980s, you’re a j-school graduate student and a clerk for a tabloid newspaper–on the lobster shift. So-called after the old English for a lob, a dolt, a loser.…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Good Girl by Gail Upchurch Sweet messages written on the bottoms of my brown paper bag lunches. Crocheted, granny square blankets. A shared strawberry malt at Woolworth’s. In the eighteen years that I’ve been a mother, I have consciously held tight to as many of my mother’s joyous little dailies and weaved them into my own mothering practice. As much as I appreciate her and celebrate all that she got right, I’ve also fought against the more unsavory parts of her parenting approach–-namely, the emotionally destructive physical discipline she doled out whenever she deemed necessary. The day after Super…
Dwight –from a work in progress by Jacinda Townsend He’d heard his mother tell the story until it was legend. Her years on the North Carolina coast, attending college as an afterthought, an avocation secondary to her true purpose, that of allowing the ocean to wash over her feet and sweep up her calves, to draw her so far towards the continental shelf, the sea hugged her shoulders. She’d pack off from her rented room, motoring to the beach while the sun was still a stage light behind clouds, then catch a city bus home in time to attend…
Fab and the Fates –from a work-in-progress by Sophia Russell Fabienne sensed an opening to broach the subject she was giddy about but also scared of. “This week I just have my classes, mostly,” she said. “And I’m going to meet up with Michelle to celebrate my birthday.” Aaron turned his entire body toward Fab’s. “I,” he stumbled. “Oh, Fab.” He brought a hand to her chin and caressed it softly. “You know how crazy it’s been for me lately. We will celebrate you, too. Your choice, I promise. What do you want to do? Dinner? Weekend in the…
Schrödinger’s Mother by Shinelle L. Espaillat “You’re always tired.” They are almost pouting when they say this. You have heard this phrase from four different people this week. Your tiredness would likely baffle your single-mother mother and her single-mother mother and a whole line of ancestors whose labor literally built the world. You are not wading in troubled water; you are not withstanding water hoses and snarling Dobermans to demand your right to exist. But you still feel like Atlas. You want to find a way to express this to your almost-pouting progeny. You want to tell them: Yes,…
Mothers, Mothering, and Ongoing Conversations Mixed Genre Folio Edited by Mary McLaughlin Slechta The voices in this folio—a hive of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art—hum with the conversations women have with their children, partners, mothers, and themselves. You will hear the pride and guilt of working mothers/artists, the frustration of adult children debating parents, both deceased and living, and the joy of others sifting memory for lessons and meaning. One poet opens our ears and hearts to the tender whisperings of guardian angels, while another, in communion with the moon, contemplates self and the passage of time. Three…
Motherconversating by Denise Lewis Patrick Osmosis… I remember being buttoned into a sleeveless, white-dotted Swiss dress. My mother had sewn it, as she did most of my clothes. She was crying, heavily pregnant with my sister. We were minutes away from getting into a car as part of her grandmother’s funeral procession. Mommie had been her favorite; everyone knew that. It was August, and probably very hot. We were both tense. But her sadness was one thing. My mix of confusion and fear was another. Before the white dress, my mother had distractedly strapped a thick Kotex pad between…
Jenny Molberg HEREDITARY – Yyvonne Deakins Collins, Elaine de Kooning, 1968 She spoke and the breasts heard singing. Heard song and called back. Fern closed in around her face. Without a word, the room brimmed lemon, lemon and veins of green while the fountain calmed itself in the yard. She held the cancer. It wasn’t her child but she tended to it. Generations passed through the twentieth century until a duct opened and sang my great-aunt into the place above my mother’s heart. Originally published in MER 24 Jenny Molberg is the author of three collections of poetry,…
Mother Bone by Mary Willette Artist Statement Mother Bone is one part of a series of pelvis explorations that I began while I was pregnant and thinking about my relationship to my body and time. Our pelvis cradles our intimate histories and creates a portal for our futures. In a year where days and months had somehow blurred together, stood still, and raced ahead all at once, I was left with an opening to consider the deep time of my body and its internal rhythms. My son was born in the fall, and I started collecting leaves on our walks…
MER Bookshelf – August 2026 Sarah Jefferis, Lucky to Have You, Finishing Line Press, May 2026, poetry Lucky to Have You is a collection of narrative lyric poems that meditate on romantic loss and love. Loss and luck are synonymous; luck always appears amid heartbreak, and in moments of unexpected luck, aged sorrow rears its wrinkled forehead. The collection comprises three sections: “Lucky to Find You,” “Lucky to Keep You,” and “Lucky to Lose You.” These imitation love poems travel up and down the East Coast- from Virginia to New York- and shadow all kinds of marriages that died…