Marin Smith Just One Last Question Before We Say Goodnight By the way, Mom, she says, where did life come from? Well, I say, unsure where to start, There are many cultures with many answers to that question. Some people think, I say, there is a thing called god. I stammer, feel nervous, lowercasing the g, peeling out past the word. Others think, I say—but I’m lost, try to start over, I have no idea how to answer. She turns my words over like a rock in her palm, and with the swiftness of a scholar and some pity…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Jennifer Hernandez Chrysalis Stretched in his twin bed, my youngest son, eleven, lies wrapped in pale green. The rest of us awake for hours. But it’s summer, nowhere urgent to be. I let him sleep. This journey is not new to me. He has two older brothers. Before long, I know, I’ll glimpse flexing in front of the mirror, hear from behind closed doors the deep voice of a stranger-son. This minute though, between sleep-and-waking, he is my baby. Past noon, shades open, sun streaming in, I lie down next to him, smooth his hair, nudge him awake with…
Cassie Mannes Murray Round Peg, Square Hole If I was counting it would be thirteen. Feels like a small number, feels young. After walking in the rain, his hood half over one eye like a pirate or a cartoon bad guy, sliding the pile of books into the book drop, my son walked back and forth through the sliding glass door of the library’s entrance maybe thirteen times. He’s new to walking. Wobbly and waddling in equal measure, one leg ready to go and bending at the knee and the other dragging behind, but only slightly. Sometimes he leads…
Bethany Jarmul A Moment, A Memory I’m sitting on a porch chair on our back deck, which is covered with autumn leaves. Near my feet, my daughter crawls amongst them—shuffle, crinkle, shuffle, crinkle. The wind whips my hair, swirls leaves around us. My daughter plays with a plastic, toddler-sized motorcycle, spinning the doo-dads and smacking the buttons with clumsy fingers. She waves a leaf at me, like a banner. “Hi-eee, Hi-eee.” I wave back, pull a leaf out of my long, golden hair. Moments die too, like the leaves. They pass furiously from future to present to past. This…
Seeking poetry, fiction, creative prose and art on theme “Ages/Stages” through the lens of motherhood. Regular Submissions ($3) are open until 7/15/23. (Need-based scholarships available; please see guidelines). NOTE: Early Bird submissions are now closed (as of 4/28) as we have reached our Submittable limit.
Featured Readers: Ambriel Bostic Mary Lou Buschi Kevin Carey MP Carver Jessica Femiani Laura Goldin Melissa Joplin Higley Debbie Koenig, Tessa Rossi Karen Elizabeth Sharpe Cristi Wells Ackerman Ambriel Floyd Bostic lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. She is a mother of two children and a dog. Her work in design is an exploration of visual story-telling. Ambriel founded and runs The In Kind Project, and nonprofit that helps children and artists collaborate to produce community theater projects. She has focused on board and volunteer work for social justice organizations for much of the last decade, including The Power…
Kimberly Ramos Reflection, But Shuffled When night slips into my bed and once again / the world is a place with no edges / I remember you are my first homeland / You, Missouri girl of cattle and birthing seasons / you of barn cats kept for utility but naming them anyways / you of early morning chores when the sky is nothing but a flush of purple dust in the pasture / You, the body that housed my body / our blood meeting like tributaries / we flowed into one another / My dreams were your dreams /…
Abby E. Murray Heirloom I’m driving while talking to my eight-year-old about how even good people can be jerks sometimes and there’s a pause then she asks from her booster seat in the back but how come you’ve never been a jerk? and the question is a cluster of jewels I can carry on my collarbone: my daughter’s belief that I am too good to ever be unkind, because for her, in this moment, on this day, I am. Reader, I have plans for this memory. Why not take it home to save for later, keep it in the…
Jennifer Georgescu Mother Series Titles from “Mother Series” 1) Boost 2) Dough 3) Fading Away 4) Milk Veins 5) Thorns Artist Statement “Mother Series” is an ongoing, long term project that began in 2015 following the birth of my first son. In our beginning days, I had no time to think, no time to sleep, and I didn’t dream. I began to feel like a shell of a person whose identity had become lost somewhere along the way. My son nursed relentlessly and I spent all day and night staring into his tiny face. I began to think…
Welcome to MER Bookshelf, a listing featuring noteworthy new and recent books by our contributors, community members, and the literary world at large that share a focus on motherhood and women’s lives. Selected 2022 Poetry Releases of Note Theresa Burns, Design. Terrapin Books 2022 Inspired by the poem “Design” by Robert Frost, the book explores the myriad meanings of that word in a contemporary woman’s life–aesthetic beauty, fate, intention, the intelligence at work in nature’s systems. The poems here exist in the tender, awkward spaces of mid-life, between aging and dying parents and children bristling to break free. A…