José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes Poem with the Yellow Pages and Rotary Phone for my mother Only the woman’s hands and last year’s phone book, resting on a wooden surface scarred and stained by past projects, are visible in the video, distance foreshortened as though I am seated close enough across her to hear her whisper my fortune. She folds, then turns each page the way one might leaf through old albums. Time, too, is foreshortened, hours of folding and turning compressed into minutes, and now the book is the type of tree I remember seeing on a side table when…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Martha Webster The Mourner’s Office I waited on a seat of oxblood velvet in a bay window above a raining courtyard. His coat hem swept the floor from the mirrored door: his last appointment. My purse, a pouch of Krugerrands. Now, I was at last a lady. The dead fox at my neck, smothered in a bath of “Joy.” Documents to sign, and a promise of taffeta. I pen my name and the lavender bequest of my mother’s sadness is mine. Martha Webster is a grandmother, nurse, hiker, whale watcher living in Los Angeles. Publications include Cortland Review, Collagist, Four…
The Mother Tree I want to write about mothers and trees. Roots and families. Art and love. Last year our world appeared to be on fire. Headlines captured devastating events around the globe. From politics to pandemics, the news cycle, as well as our personal lives, were upended in so many ways. In the midst of one of many California blazes, a story about a redwood matriarch dubbed the Mother of the Forest in Santa Cruz, California caught my attention. Mother of the Forest is one of the tallest trees in Santa Cruz Park. A symbolic womb at her core forms an 8 x…
A Mother’s Love Comes in All Shapes and Sizes by Corinne de Palma My mother was a quintessential modern woman, beautiful, educated, a leader in her own way, more than a match for my father, who, with his own intellect and good looks, was admired and respected. She was a virtuoso on the piano, and with her keen fashion sense, she was the epitome of elegance and strength. My father left home permanently when I was seven years old. But unlike many women in the 60s and 70s, my mother didn’t buckle from the pressure of being left alone…
Lisa Hase-Jackson Her Own Girl Lisa M. Hase-Jackson’s debut collection of poetry, Flint and Fire, was selected by Jericho Brown for the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series. She holds an MFA in poetry from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and a MA in English from Kansas State University. A full-time writer and Editor in Chief at South 85 Journal, Lisa lives in Charleston, SC with her husband, two cats, and seven chickens.
An Imperfect Mother by Joan Leotta One of my early memories is marveling over a statue of Mary, the Mother of Jesus in the corner of my first-grade classroom. The nuns said Mary was the perfect Mother. I learned more about Mary that year and soon had begged my mother for a statue of her to keep in my room—I talked to her when I was upset. This serene woman who was, as I had been told, the mother of us all, was very different from my dear but loud and often annoying real-life mother. My mother rarely had…
Catherine Lu Mama Bird Catherine Lu is an Emmy-nominated arts and culture producer in Houston. She covers the local arts scene and produces the National Poetry Month series “Voices and Verses,” which is an archive of interviews and poems of Houston-area poets. She works for Houston Public Media and has contributed to NPR.
Point-Counterpoint by Linda Murphy Marshall Flip sides of the same coin. Yin and yang. Point, counterpoint. Sisters. Besides their diminutive frames, their oversized intellects, having mothered four children each, they had little in common. Picture my mother. Movie star gorgeous in her prime: soft, permed brunette curls framing her face, shirtwaist dresses that highlighted her slim waist. Petite: Five-foot-two, eyes-of-blue, she’d remind us in rare moments of levity, parroting lyrics from the popular 1920s song. Sophisticated: in tight control of her emotions, her words, her actions. Reserved: many topics off-limits for discussion, such as sharing feelings, insecurities, problems, fears—both…
May Day by Heather Haldeman “Hurray! Hurray! It’s the 1st of May. Outdoor sex starts today!” “Mom!” “I know,” she laughed. “You wanted the mother with the bun in the back, the Peter Pan collar and the cross around the neck.” “It’s just what a thing to say to your daughter?” “Relax, you’re an adult. Loosen up.” That was how she greeted me as an adult every May 1st on our morning phone call. Marilyn was not the mother I’d wanted as a child. She wasn’t like any of my friend’s mothers. They drove station wagons. She was in…
Role Models? In this folio, our third in our series on “Mother Figures,” poets and prose writers grapple with different aspects of the role of “Mother.” They recall the parenting they received and investigate its nexus with the people and parents they became. In some cases, the speakers discover role models elsewhere; in others, maturity provides new insights into their mothers not only as they performed that role but as individuals. Patrice de Palma – A Mother’s Love Comes in All Shapes and Sizes Heather Haldeman – May Day Lisa Hase-Jackson – Her Own Girl Joan Leotta…