Lisa Briana Williams The Steamroller Tries to Remain Light It is too easy to say everything we were told about motherhood is a lie. More true to say I absorbed nothing but goodness until it came for me—that “goodness”—to wrangle with & prove what else good may be. Each person inhabiting may be is different—yet I try & try to find formulas: this honey for that bitter room: that sofa to rest on a tongue. I have images of myself as a child sitting quietly in a yard, abandoned & calm. But one child in a yard is…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Jennifer Martelli The cover image of Susan Rich’s Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems is Caravan by the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. This bright and complex image shows a woman at a piano in a small caravan outfitted with intricate pulleys and wheels, set against a shadowy landscape. The book is dedicated to her contemporary and friend, Leonora Carrington, the surrealist artist and political activist. Rich’s work reflects this same masterful and surreal shape-shifting and travel, as well as a precise palping of the world’s political heartbeat. While the collection signals movement—the titles…
Review by Emily Webber Deadheading & Other Stories, Beth Gilstrap’s short story collection, portrays women in the Carolinas as they endure hardship and process trauma, and explores our connection with the natural world and family. Gilstrap’s flash fiction has appeared in literary journals such as Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, Ninth Letter, as well as the Best Microfiction Anthology. She creates stories lush with details and sensations, even in short spaces. She showcases these skills in the flash fiction and longer works that make up this collection. Place is not merely a backdrop in these stories; it is in the bones…
Review by Christine Beck Jennifer Jean’s new book of poetry, Object Lesson, is not an easy read. The topic that weaves her poems together is the objectification and pain experienced by women who are mired in, or have escaped from, what is euphemistically called “sex work.” Jasmine Grace Marino, founder and director of Bags of Hope Ministries, who was a sex worker for eight years and who has been out of that life for the past thirteen years, writes an introduction. She says about the film “Pretty Woman,” in which Julia Roberts stars as a prostitute, “…not once did…
Review by Carole Mertz Why should a discussion of W.G. Sebald (think Austerlitz, 2001) arise between two British women seated in a Norfolk pub of an early afternoon? But the women, Fran and Annie, old friends, are interested in literature and this banter is typical of their literary exchanges. A third character, Rachel, enters on page 11. She’s a wealthy American who teaches the art of creative writing and makes “good money,” thinks Annie, who “judges from her clothes—unaware her new pal benefits from an ample family trust fund.” Then young Tamsin appears and soon Thomas, a passionate Shelley follower.…
Review by Jennifer Martelli The poems in Rebecca Hart Olander’s debut collection, Uncertain Acrobats, not only recollect a father’s life, but also navigate the landscape of grief, making all movement breathtaking and physical. Olander’s mastery in her construction of the book belies whatever uncertainty or hesitancy the daughter—the speaker—has as she travels a world without her father. The poems are arranged so well, and with such precision of imagery and language, I trusted and moved with the speaker. The poems reflect the gorgeous image on the cover of the book: three women (or are they the same woman?) dancing…
Review by Michelle Panik While the organization of Cammy Thomas’s latest poetry collection, Tremors, is simple—three parts that address each stage of the poet’s life—the material is not. Tucked within these pages are poems both humorous and sober, declarative and unsure, with the unifying theme being tremors—both physical and figurative. Part I concerns Thomas’s childhood growing up on rural Long Island. Here, the tremors are of strength, and a vulnerable child often finds herself at the mercy of unreliable caretakers. “Mum”—which is a reference to both moms and secrecy—tells of hiding from a father often armed with a whip…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger A Spell for Living is a visually striking collection of poetry from poet Keisha-Gaye Anderson. In her third collection, Anderson pairs her poems with original pen and ink drawings, adding movement and intimacy to the page. The conversational tone and the drawings create a document not unlike a personal journal where the writer has invited us to see her mind at work. But these are spells, too, or poems meant to foment magic for a people. Keisha-Gaye Anderson’s biography is full of interesting and varied detours. She is a poet, visual artist, and businesswoman…
Karren LaLonde Alenier Granddaughter Clara Spera explores Bubbie Ruth’s big closet my mom Jane Ginsburg was never hamstrung by her mom’s inattention no rather she and her brother were often smothered it’s not as if Bubbie caused collapsed lungs Bubbie and I are short people among our family clan our love another gauge for our largeness the way we blather sweet nothings to those we hold dear not stung by formalities I shopped her closet once I donned her cashmere coat beckoned to her as she bent over briefs look it fits me so well me too not a…
December 2021 Welcome to the new issue of MER VOX Quarterly. We are pleased to present two new folios in this issue. “Ukrainian Voices” presents the work of Ukrainian poets, some in translation. Our latest Mother Figures folio, “Mother in Objects,” explores in prose and poetry the way physical objects come to evoke some essence of the mother. Our latest M.A.M.A. words-and-art collaboration introduces an installation at the Museum of Motherhood, Mother Tree by Helen Hiebert, and Nest by Martha Joy Rose and Polly Wood. Check out our latest book reviews, here. Ukrainian Voices – A Poetry Folio Curated…