Review by Rebecca Jane Some Dark Familiar holds nothing back, but charges, full force, into the reader’s interior with hard truths about how reality behaves when a woman chooses to be a new, single mother. Poignant images take aim and hit their target: “Now I sit in this body of the mother: / part straightjacket, part hot-air balloon” (6). These poems navigate womanhood, especially when we are mothers and feel “sucked into the storms of our anatomy.” Julia C. Alter won the 2023 Sundog Poetry Book Award for this remarkable collection. Alter received an MFA from the Vermont College…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Emily Webber Lee Upton is a prolific writer with short story collections, poetry books, novels, and even a libretto among her published works. Now with her latest work, Wrongful, she adds a literary mystery to the list. The novel opens at a literary festival for a prominent children’s author and novelist, Mira Wallacz, who has disappeared in the middle of the event. As the participants look for Mira, it becomes clear their relationships with her are laced with jealousy, competitiveness, and focused on how her fame impacts them. Another novelist, Luisa, muses while searching: She squirmed against the…
MER will celebrate the publication of Volume 23 with two online launch parties on Sunday, April 27th, and Sunday, May 4th, both at 5:30 PM Eastern time. These will be quick, lightning-style readings of one poem or prose excerpt per reader. We look forward to the readings, and hope you can attend. Readings will be hosted by MER editors Marjorie Tesser, Jennifer Martelli, and Cindy Veach The public is welcome to attend, but pre-registration is required. Readers are also required to pre-register. Register here for April 27th Register here for May 4th READERS FOR APRIl 27 Aimee Suzara Amanda Auchter…
Alexis David The Walled Forest —after David Baker’s “Can You Say It” There was a calling. Yes, the winter leaves. They were calling me— sparrows, soil, the blue tones of light and a rhododendron tree. It was a calling, yes, a calling, inside of me. The day progressed from two to three. We asked, wondering, if soon— how could it possibly be? I could be not just me, but two. But, three? (forgive me for wanting so much) I was a woman dancing, a Chanel scent, a daisy opening, a romance (inside of me). The tiny cells, the petals, both…
Get a print copy! ($18) Get a PDF copy ($5) Editor-in-Chief Marjorie Tesser Poetry Editors Jennifer Martelli Cindy Veach Prose Co-Editor J.L. Scott The issue features poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art Emily Adams-Aucoin, Eneida Alcalde, Anne Anthony, Joy Arbor, Amanda Auchter, Subhaga Crystal Bacon, Courtney Bambric, Jennifer Barber, Margo Berdeshevsky, Wendy BooydeGraaff, Beth Bosworth, Laura Johanna Braverman, Katherine Briccetti, Rebecca Brock, Annette L. Brown, Leslie Brown, Sarah Burke, Mary Lou Buschi, Alyssa Cami, Tina Cane, Brenda Cárdenas, Elizabeth J. Coleman, J.L. Conrad, Jia-Rui Cook, Lauren Crawford, Anna M Cullen, Terri Linn Davis, Jeanine DeHoney, Shawna Ervin,…
MER Bookshelf – March 2025 Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Lynn McGee, Science Says Yes, Broadstone Books, January 2025, poetry Science Says Yes by Lynn McGee addresses human empathy and resilience in relation to nature, advances in technology and the perplexing dynamics of a world hurtling toward its own apocalypse. The poems invite the reader to resist isolation and expand their capacity for kindness towards themselves and the environment. Each poem’s title is a headline which was searched out and matched to the poem after it was written. This adds unexpected layers of meaning and speaks to the…
Review by Nicelle Davis Beyond Survival: Nadia Alexis’s Testament to Love, Memory, and Reclamation Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis is not just a collection of poetry and photography—it is a haunting echo of lineage, an unflinching dialogue between a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother. Alexis does not merely document; she conjures. She does not simply describe; she immerses. Every image, every line, pulses with the weight of inheritance, with the tension between pain and resilience. This is poetry that does not just speak of survival—it embodies it. In “Portraits,” Alexis captures love not as a…
Review by Meghan Miraglia “[W]hat comes after the last word”: A review of Hortensia, in winter The first line of Megan Merchant’s Hortensia, in winter is a damn good one: “I want to ask the hard questions, but they sharpen back to god.” The line is from “Invocation”, a poem summoning Mississippi ditches and lineage and “bones and chapped prayers” (17) As the best first poems do, “Invocation” sets the tone for the rest of the collection. Hortensia, in winter is a series of prose poems (a form Merchant has mastered), but more than that, it is a…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger In her latest chapbook, Gala, Lynne Shapiro melds persona and ekphrasis in an extended look at David Salle’s work and woman as artistic subject, especially in the painting “The Black Bra.” The poems offer a commentary on the surrealist movement, the objectification or glorification of women—or parts of women— and how Salle’s work in particular and all art in general is in conversation with other art. Shapiro is an award-winning poet and editor who lives in New Jersey and who has served as poet-in residence in England, Morocco and Spain. She worked in the…
Review by Rachel Lutwick-Deaner Flu Season is Katie Kalisz’s second poetry collection, following Quiet Woman (2019) and those readers who appreciate her previous attention to the stillness and sweetness of life will not be disappointed. Flu Season examines the uncertainty and, often, dread that characterizes motherhood and life in fragile times. This text is not only about the pandemic, but it looks at life and death in many forms–from the natural world to family, neighbors, and friends to anticipation of what deaths may come. The arc of the collection mirrors prodrome, illness, and recovery: Getting Warm, Dread, Red Circles,…