MER Best of the Net Nominations Poetry June 14, 22 (Summer Girls) Terri Linton, “Boogie Down Girls” March 13, 22 (Release) Jessica Cuello, “Dear Mother (Silence was my pride)” N.F. Kimball “The Burial” December 14, 21 (Ukrainian Voices) Halyna Kruk, “to Sylvia Plath” Translated by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky 10/14/21 (Storied Mothers): Richelle Bucilli “Cinderella Thinks About Motherhood” Fiction June 14, 22 (Summer Girls) Tiffany Sciacca, “P.F. 1982”
Author: Mom Egg Review
MER vol. 20 “Mother Figures” Print Issue PDF Issue Our twentieth annual print issue is themed “Mother Figures,” cultural icons representing motherhood. What is a mother figure? What have we been told or shown by them? What values do they reflect? What cultural learning do they assume? How does a mother figure deviate from one’s own experiences? Our contributors, established writers and emerging debut authors, responded with work that is resonant, original, and thoughtful, and which considers a dizzying range of mother figures: some worthy of emulation and some, cautionary tales, some selected and some foisted upon us. Here…
RaShell R. Smith-Spears A Writer Speaks of Lineage My foremothers were magic. Their nimble fingers squeezed syntax into cauldrons of rhythm and rolled juju across pages that glared with our erasure; they poured images into white spaces defined by the narrowed lines of Black people’s lives. They touched history with metaphor, making charms to ward off lies. As I wait before the page, inky wand in hand, I know my foremothers were magic. My foremothers were full of wonder. I speak their names as incantations against the spell of invisibility: Margaret. Toni. Gloria. Bebe. Leslie. Octavia.* They have many…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg In an interview in Literary Mama this past spring with editor Christina Consolino, Allison Blevins shared “As a mom, I have to sneak in moments to write. I write while sitting at a stoplight, pumping gas, waiting in the school pick-up line. Everything comes out as a line or phrase. Sometimes I just write titles. Often I have pages of images. When I start to get a feel for what the book wants to be, then I start thinking about the work as individual pieces and a collection. That is when the reader enters. I…
Review by Claudia Putnam In the title poem of this debut collection, the speaker’s father has a saying: Since the house is burning, let us warm ourselves. The house is surely burning. We may be frightened, but there’s comfort here, too. Humans grew up with fire, sharing experiences of loss and beauty that perhaps have warmed us more than the literal fuels that got us into this mess. What a gorgeous, painful, even paralyzing paradox. So many poets are writing about climate change and other, mostly related, disasters in a glancing way. Yes, the house is burning, but I…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger An ABD (all-but-done with dissertation) doctoral student absent of motivation, an artistic worker trapped in a corporate job and craving motherhood, and a yoga instructor seeking the good in all make up main characters in Off the Yoga Mat, a novel by Cheryl J. Fish. Divided into chapters dominated by one of the three main protagonists of the novel, the book is a modern tale of three people on the cusp of middle age Set in 1999, before cell phones were ubiquitous and when the city was still affectionately gritty, the book begins in…
Review by Lara Lillibridge You ask any four-year-old what they want to be when they grow up, and the answers are relatively predictable: doctor, teacher, firefighter, astronaut, veterinarian … […] My honest, doe-eyed reply? I wanted to be a chair. Ryan Rae Harbuck was a sixteen-year-old girl in Colorado who swam on the swim team, went to high school dances, and all the typical things until an accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. This heart-warming and often funny memoir follows her journey through young adulthood and into marriage and toddler-rearing. This is not an illness or disability…
Review by Ruth Hoberman “When I kiss her, I bend lower than I used to.” So thinks an adult daughter as she leaves her mother after a visit. Anyone who has ever had aging parents will recognize that gradual, deepening knowledge of impending loss: “Her hair, cut short,/shows the shape of her skull.” But Jennifer L Freed’s debut collection of poems, When Light Shifts, doesn’t proceed as expected, from aging to death. In lucid, restrained, yet powerful language, Freed tells the story of her mother’s stroke, then partial recovery—a loss complicated by what is not lost, yet can’t be…
Review by Kimberly Lee (M)othering—an anthology of writing and art edited by Annie Sorbie and Heidi Grogan (Inanna 2022) has a saturated indigo cover filled with vibrant shapes and patterns in contrasting colors that delight the eye. As the images indicate, this compilation of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, punctuated by a selection of visual work, shape-shifts among numerous perspectives and incarnations in its thoughtful exploration of motherhood. The second thing one’s eye is drawn to, quite possibly after a double take, is the title. As the parenthetical “M” suggests, this compilation goes beyond any strictly confined notions of…
MER Quarterly September 2022 Literature Eco-Poetry: Nature Through the Lens of Motherhood MER Poetry Folio Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Art M.A.M.A. Issue No. 52 – Performance Manifesto