Margo Berdeshevsky SHE WASN’T QUITE MY MOTHER…BUT… I She wasn’t quite my mother. My elder “mother figure” friend would have been 110 years young this May 10. These dark-lit, unlit days we have been led by those who have no such thing as empathy. None ever taught them, mothers leaked no milk of human kindness from their breasts. I think of one who taught me after my own mother had long ago died, one who kept teaching me as I aged but was still her younger friend, one who wanted and needed to make sure that I was going…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Donna Katzin For Ruth Bader Ginsberg At 87, she dies in childbirth on Erev Rosh Hashanah, as the new year struggles to be born. Who will nurture it now? We mourn the wisp of woman who exhausted all her matter, breath — a leaf with only its lengthening shadow to give to the wind. We shiver in the chill, stare into sky abandoned by its angels, look to years we will not live to see that it will take to recover the century of rights we have just lost. As we begin again, we turn to the infant year, squint…
Hilary King In an Almost Empty Room with Ellen Bryant Voigt Last-minute funding blows the poet into town. Little notice, late notice, the difficult location at the commuter college downtown leave most of the hard blue chairs out of work. We who swam against the tide of our lives huddle together, unblinking as fish. She begins with syntax, her research into neuroscience, cognitive dissonance, where she breaks a line now, and why. She reads one of her poems, laughs, coughs, removes her bright silk scarf, taps her fingers on the desk, gets up to write on the board, sits down…
Tsaurah Litzky Alba for my Grandmother You were cunning, strong, fierce as a she-bear with cubs, no less then death could stop your bustling, your clatter, your burrowing among all your pots for that one small pan to fry me one small egg. Mom and I lived with you and grandpa when I was small, Daddy was in Europe fighting in the war to save the Jews, Grandpa’s job was his factory, your job was feeding us. You loved to cook. You were so good at it, aunts, uncles, cousins were always dropping by at dinnertime. you were rich and…
Anne Elezabeth Pluto Mother to Remember For MKS Your yahrzeit will arrive on the 20th of Av, 5780 Dog day August – 8th month – 10th day the Magus twirling the yikzor flame into silver tracks I haven’t been back to Brooklyn since before we knew the pandemic would take us all under that didn’t kill you fell on the emerald carpet staircase hemorrhagic stroke then husband, housekeeper, doctor neighbor – 911 – sirens rush to Maimonides – you never woke up by the third day It was decided – they came in pairs and said goodbye. I wasn’t…
Golda Solomon my mother figure is jazz anna zack gave me life independence firecrackers announce my arrival round midnight feedings from infant to woman the blues hummed loud ‘til teats of notes chord changes/ jazz woke by a legend with three horns a plenty in his mouth blind and yet all seeing he knew my laugh club smells of stale tobacco sweet sweat and maryjane riffs that jelly rolled up and down keys my hungry mouth found you Monk my jazz mother last flourish of arpeggio on the keyboard tipped hat cash register opened paid by the termini brothers…
Lisa C. Taylor Heirlooms for Annie She darkened windows to halt vertigo, brewed broth from chicken necks for migraines, buried sickness on a plate twenty-two steps from the back door. I imagined her hairnet spun from spider webs. Dust motes saved in a muslin bag. No waste. Great Grandma wore an underskirt, high collar, rollup stockings of flesh-hued cotton. Lip swollen on one side. Loose teeth. Rolling pin and arthritic hands. Kin, not akin. She bent religion to fit, never believed a dishwasher could purify or anyone but God predict a storm but tragedies elbowed past regardless of daily prayers.…
Colette Tennant Tidepools Studying the insistent moon, tidepools are sturdy mothers. They hold parabolas of changing water, cover gray sculpins in the folds of their shadowed skirts, lift stars the color of sunsets toward the only light they will ever know, unfold purple urchins like many-fingered queens. Colette Tennant has two poetry books: Commotion of Wings and Eden and After. Her poems have been included in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Poetry Ireland Review and others. She’s thankful for mother figures throughout her life. Colette has three grown children.
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Night Collage is both a love story and a slow dance, opening with the foreboding, In Flew Chaos, a poem that juxtaposes wind that “rearranged the strand” with a knock on the door in the middle of the night during a snowstorm. The events call up a long-ago memory of the poet’s mother letting a woman with a gun into the house and chatting with her at the kitchen table. This narrative of human fragility, all the more apparent during the pandemic, creates a kind of photomontage through time, as the poet recalls other…
Review by Emily Webber When I was a kid, I loved when we drove somewhere at night so that I could look at other people’s houses, lights glowing in the night, and wonder what was going on inside. Something was intriguing about lit-up windows, even if I couldn’t see inside. Particularly driving through certain suburban neighborhoods, the houses looked perfect from the outside. I thought the key to happiness was getting get a place like that when I was older. Kelly Fordon’s short story collection, I Have the Answer, is like wandering through that perfect suburban neighborhood but with…