Richelle Buccilli Cinderella Thinks About Motherhood after Lana Hechtman Ayers Praise the birds who still come to sing here. Praise the sunlight making dust appear biblical, possible spinning in its own cloud of light like a child imagining freedom. Even the walls sense something grows here, how they try to contain us restless and wild, the clamor of pots and pans, the music of water a whistle through silver pipes and foundation. No one sees us here the way small hearts do, finch, squirrel, and rodent. No one knows us here the way echoes of our own footfalls do.…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Kristin Indorato Mouths here we are at the end of the story and in this adaptation, the wicked stepmother is simply gone when the children return, having foiled the witch with a chicken bone and pushed her into the oven, they abandon the gingerbread house are led home by the traitorous birds who ate the breadcrumb trail laid down in lieu of the white pebbles the stepmother found caught them trembling like eggs under the moon and now the children are gobbled up in the arms of their father who is so glad to see them alive, and who…
Abriana Jetté Persephone Responds Fast ships slow snakes at the bottom of the sea. Every earth born creature stood still the day he came for me. The downward dive compels a Vesuvian festoon a vertiginous release that smells like ocean floor and moon, like him, but worse. After he had me, he prayed. Offered gifts. I took multiple sips of his wine. Whatever red stayed on my lips I wiped off on his. No one else knows this. Groveling young girl is a hard tale to sell to justify the weather. He shoulders the blame. Truth is, to be…
Tina Kelley Just One More, Mama “Wicked” and “step” are the only kinds of mothers. Name one mom left breathing in Disneyland. Orphaned: Bambi, Cinderella, Snow White. Scraping by with just dad: Belle, Jasmine, Ariel. Sent to inadequate foster care: Sleeping Beauty and Simba. When Kate and I play sisters she always makes us orphans. Mothers are mere learning tools, manipulables in the classroom, something to push against, to learn from, to erode, or try, until the limits push back. She says, If I kick it, I go to my room. She says, If I stick my tongue out…
Michael Montlack Stevie Nicks as Fairy Godmother How we run to her, extending our hearts skinned like knees, knowing she has the bandage. A twirl of gauze. Hoarse from all her hollering: Beware love! Look how it’s sent me spinning! Why—why do we never listen? Mesmerized by the melodies, perhaps we long to hurt … so we might have cause to hide beneath her cape, searching for some secret pocket where she stows the tonic she pours into her songs. Return to “Storied Mothers.” Michael Montlack is author of two poetry collections and editor of the Lambda Finalist…
Mireya Perez-Bustillo A Cow Jumped Over the Moon To a bovine dubbed Molly Return to “Storied Mothers.” Mireya Perez -Bustillo’s poetry searches for that “other voice” breaking through entrapment and oppression, the fragile markers to unearth more hidden voices. Her work appears in Caribbean Review, Americas Review, Revista del Hada, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado, was published by Floricanto Press in 2020. She is a Coordinator at the LP2 Program at the Graduate Center-CUNY.
Jeri Theriault Demeter in the sixth stage of grief Return to “Storied Mothers.” Jeri Theriault’s poetry collections include Radost, My Red and the award-winning In The Museum Of Surrender. She is the editor of Wait: Poems From The Pandemic. Her poems and reviews have appeared in journals such as The American Journal Of Poetry, The Rumpus, The Texas Review, and The Ashville Poetry Review. A Fulbright recipient and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jeri won the 2019 Maine Literary Award for poetry. www.jeritheriault.com
Sherre Vernon Photograph, As I’d Have You See Me Return to “Storied Mothers.” Sherre Vernon (she/her/hers) is the author two award-winning chapbooks: Green Ink Wings (fiction), and The Name is Perilous (poetry). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and anthologized in several collections, including Bending Genres, Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions. Readers describe her writing as heartbreaking, richly layered, lyrical and intelligent. To read more of her work visit www.sherrevernon.com/publications and tag her into conversation @sherrevernon.
Review by Mindy Levokove Rich with irony and conceit, Wonder Electric is a book of poetry which offers a view of life which ratchets up our perceptions, our conceptions and our connections. Elizabeth Cohen brings the reader her message of concern, awareness, and clarity. She heightens and highlights experience with systemic charge and polarity. Her powerful and surprising language attracts and spins, transporting the reader masterfully, as she outlines and underscores her content and concerns. What happens to the natural, abundant life on earth when our species collects and spreads, trying to wrest the reins of control of nature, which…
Review by Anna Limontas-Salisbury Ana C. H. Silva’s While Mercury Fish is a cautionary tale women whisper to each other and sometimes to men, but the men don’t listen. The poems, like whispers, can be mistaken as rumor or disguised, as it’s less respectful twin, gossip. But every ounce of a whisper holds a gram of truth. The truth is women’s lives are vulnerable. These poems and prose read like a woman with her eye on the horizon, right up to the moment she has to escape. In the opening piece “The Best Way I Can Explain It,” the…