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…
Author: Mom Egg Review
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…
Brittany Ackerman Big Splashes, So Big I dream that beetles have infested our home. The meaning of beetles in dreams varies, but some say that dreams about insects in general can indicate a need to be free from anxiety or a lack of control in a person’s life. If a beetle appears in your dreams, it could be a sign that a major change is about to bring positive transformation into your life. In the dream, I take our Dyson vacuum and suck up the beetles one by one. There are hundreds. Each one disappears into the belly of…
Mother / WRITER – Artist Prose Brittany Ackerman, “Big Splashes, So Big” Jennifer Case, “Things People Tell Me When I Write About Motherhood” Maggie Cramer and Emily Cramer, “So(ma)tic Poetry Exercises, after CA Conrad” Derek Davidson, “Medium” Geula Geurts, “Moon Child” Tamara J. Madison, “Awkward Agency/Salient Survival” Melissa Mowry, “Cinderella & I” Leah Richards, “Ghost, Mother” Amy Gallo Ryan, “Water’s Edge” Poetry Sharon Dolin, “Two Questions” Mary Fontana, “Meditation Culminating in a Line From My Son’s Comic Book” Jennifer Garfield, “ghazal for the meadow of my heart” Maria Mazziotti Gillan, “When I Was Still Young” Amy Lee…
Callie Plaxco Aphasia There are whole days that pass without a single thought taking shape into intelligible words. The wind screams and I think perhaps it is a child waking. But the leaves shake and always there are noises that will sound like children. As her grandmother once said, Callie Plaxco flew the coop when she left South Carolina to journey west to the University of Wyoming for her MFA in Creative Writing. Her chapbook Dear Person is available at Dancing Girl Press and individual poems have appeared in Carve Magazine, Tinderbox, SWWIM and Sugar House…
Review by Jesse Breite Rediscovering Motherhood: A Review of Lodged in the Belly by Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice “I want to see the afterbirth” writes Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice in the opening poem of Lodged in the Belly (Main Street Rag, 2024), the debut collection from longtime Atlanta teacher and Writing Center director. The speaker wants to see what tends to be dismissed in the event of a birth, that biological matter which nurtures the baby before it separates from the mother, also the conduit of genetic inheritance. Dracos-Tice calls the afterbirth an “Amnion mantra ray, filter and feeder” and…
Review by Deborah Leipziger In a time where we need courage, Linda Carney-Goodrich’s poems help make us brave. In her first collection, Dot Girl, she breaks new ground in her searing poems of redemption and transformation. She takes us by the hand and guides us through her childhood, coming of age in Boston and surviving foster care. In these poems we take flight, move through bracing sea water, experience clouds, amidst violence and abuse. We see the world through the eyes of a child who refuses to be broken; we visit the landmarks of the poet’s childhood, the parks…
Dayna Patterson Gertrude on arte materna Published in MER 21 Note: The poem is published as an image to preserve formatting. Dayna Patterson is a Thea-curious recovering Mormon, fungophile, macrophotography enthusiast, and textile artist. She’s the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020). Honors include the Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award and the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. Her creative work has appeared recently in EcoTheo, Kenyon Review, and Whale Road Review. “Gertrude on arte materna” was originally published in…
Review by Melanie McGehee In A Measure of Intelligence, Pepper Stetler journeys through history to discover how and why society has come to define and measure intelligence as we do. She purposes to challenge our thinking, ultimately hoping for a more equitable future for those considered intellectually disabled. What would motivate a Professor of Art History at Miami University to tackle a field of study as different as this one? A mother’s love. Stetler’s daughter Louisa has Down syndrome. In the opening pages, Stetler shares intimate moments. She tells us about her hope filled pregnancy days, joking with her…
Review by Emily Webber Laura Chow Reeve’s debut story collection, A Small Apocalypse, takes place in the wildness of Florida, following a group of queer friends in mostly interlinked stories as they form bonds with each other, defy expectations, and seek to learn more about themselves. Some stories are outside the bounds of our world and others entirely realist—one story is a packing list for the apocalypse, in one a woman is transforming into a reptile, in another a normal trip to Disney World turns tragic and bizarre. There’s also government-controlled dating, and impending hurricane, pickled memories in jars,…