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…
Author: Mom Egg Review
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…
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…