Blair Hurley Breastfeeding and the Early Sacrifices of Motherhood What they say about early motherhood amnesia is true: the first few months I was a mother are mostly a blur now, and looking back on them, I’m not sure how I made it through. I had my daughter in the first week of the pandemic, in early March. The birth experience was normal, but two days later, the world had changed; her doctor (and mine) were quarantined, all of my postpartum appointments were cancelled, the physiotherapist I had lined up made an apologetic call describing some exercises to do…
Author: Mom Egg Review
M.A.M.A. issue 54 – Mathilde Jansen, Art, and Lisa DeSiro, Poetry Mathilde Jansen Mathilde Jansen hails from Deventer (at the IJssel river valley), in the Netherlands. She graduated from the Royal Academy, The Hague (KABK) in 2006. Dar es Salaam has been a second home and source of inspiration. In 2016 she completed the postgraduate studies Education in Arts (Beroepskunstenaar in de Klas) at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. Her primary photographic practice seeks the universal value of natural resources and minerals as a means of tracing the complex relationship between people and the global economy. She…
Maram Al-Masri Poetry from The Abduction (forthcoming from White Pine Press in Spring 2023) Translated by Hélène Cardona The Abduction refers to an autobiographical event in Maram Al-Masri’s life. When, as a young Arab woman living in France, she decides to separate from her husband with whom she has a child, the father kidnaps the baby and returns to Syria. Al-Masri won’t see her son for thirteen years. This is the story of a woman denied the basic right to raise her child. These are haunting, spellbinding poems of love, despair, and hope, a delicate, profound and powerful book on…
Noreen Graf After Your Mother Dies and What If I Don’t Noreen Graf lives in South Texas. Her comics have appeared in Political Irony. She was a finalist in the James Jones First Book Contest, and runner up in the Chester B Himes Short Fiction Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in The Ocotillo Review, Sixfold, and Dirty Chai. She is currently an MFA student in the Creative Writing program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Cristi Ackerman Wells My Mother “I was adopted when I was two weeks old.” So goes the beginning of my life story. I have always known I was adopted, but I never knew my biological mother. Her existence was a pulling question, tugging at me. It felt strange to not know someone with whom I had such intimate beginnings. I was the only one of my peers who was adopted. I was fascinated by biological families. I made a study of how they interacted. How similar they looked and moved. Inevitably my studies resulted in furthering my isolation.…
Starr Davis Strange Fruits My grandma keeps a bowl of oranges on her counter. Petite, luscious mandarins. They always look so perfect. Everything in my grandma’s apartment has always been perfect. It took me years to realize it is all perfect because she is not. It is my nephew’s demand that oranges be present when he visits my grandma in her senior living community. Last time he was here, he say, Grandmama, you don’t like me anymore! I said, boy, why would you say that? And he say because you don’t have any oranges for me! She laughed with…
Elīna Eihmane Night Mommy When darkness falls Night Mommy crawls into your bed with scissors. She cuts your nails and treats your wounds with sea buckthorn oil, she rubs White Flower ointment on your nose so you can breathe with ease and never snore or sneeze. When you wake up in the morning, the Night Mommy stops crawling. A report comes in of her deeds, and you say: Thank you, and: Please. Elīna Eihmane is a poet, artist, filmmaker and mother from Latvia, currently based in Taiwan. Her first picture book One Day At The Taiwan…
Heather Lanier Origin Story with Porcelain Duck In my hand is a porcelain duck with turquoise eyes that look like they’d bat if only porcelain duck-eyes could move. It stands, the duck, if you put it on my dresser. But I’m the one standing, in a crib tall as me. I grip the figurine and banging it back and forth between two bars. Clang-clung, clang-clung. One sound flat, one sound full. Clang-clung, clang-clung. The carpet is fern green. The windows are two and tall and streaming with backyard light in a land I don’t know is called Pennsylvania. I…
Kristine Kopperud When you ask if I miss Dad I know you’re asking if he was ever even here, with me, but more, with you. I know that behind the door to your room, which is missing its stop for the number of times you’ve slammed it, you sometimes still finger fraying pictures of him, your young memory scrambling to unquestion what you see in them and what you don’t see of him now, to protect the stories you peg to those pictures from the disjointing I forced on you, unwillingly but as naturally as dreaming, in making you…
Cynthia Neely A Sturdy Well Built Home For weeks we watch the white-headed woodpecker whittle out a nest in the once-stout beam or our house, the rotting wood irresistible. A nest that might befit a mate – tempting her with a tapped-out invitation –pulled in by the promise of a flawless home. We listen hushed, at the first pale squeaks and hisses, anticipating a perfect perch from which to watch the metamorphosis of bright white egg to fully-fledged flyer. When I was pregnant for the first time (and at 35, I assumed for the last), we carved out space…