Caitlin Gildrien The Stone Sits Down to Dinner It is loud with children debating the most powerful Pokémon and the stone is grateful she doesn’t have ears. One child does not like her lasagna, though last week this child had seconds and asked the stone if they could have lasagna again. The other child does not like the bread with the stuff on it, and the stone would like to scream that she didn’t put garlic on that slice, she set it aside purposely, just try it for god’s sake, but the stone doesn’t have a voice. The…
Author: Mom Egg Review
L. Bellee Jones-Pierce Early May The robins are late this year. I thought they’d never nest. Their piles of sticks and grass, dirtied cobweb nets, waxed and waned like a moon at the corner of our porch, growing and then blowing off the slats and into the gravel with the wind. More than a month since they began, the birds take turns warming eggs. Finally. The plump one— the one I see most—will stay when I come outside, watchful while the lock jangles. I wonder where the other goes when it startles, sudden wings and sound. Small things…
Amy Lemmon Fracture Season My god the breaks we lived through— snapped eyeglasses, chipped dinner plate, pillowcase ripped, mug handle cracked, bent door-closer, crushed a bit more ++++++with each door-swing. No surprise, after all, to find ++++++two years later an ankle turned, a tiny fracture, chit of bone dislodged. Oh how we tried, but no— no boot or brace, no velcro, no gorilla glue or black electrical wire, no duct tape, epoxy, patch, or threaded needle could set this home, this body back to rights. Amy Lemmon’s poetry collections include Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press) and The…
Xiaoly Li A Small Goddess This freshly store-made tofu we stumble upon, grassy, nutty, melts in the mouth. That purple corn, chewy, earthy— your favorite, the stubborn root woven deep in us. I don’t mind a pilgrimage to scattered shrines for specialties: Costco for wild mushrooms, plump with rain, and jackfruit chips that crackle—unleashed; H-Mart’s tilapia, silver-scaled for steaming, chives’ biting memory folded into dumplings. For you, these wheeled offerings— our second chance to lift the weight we carry. Redo those years— I was an ocean away when you learned to walk. Here, I pull this new green…
U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo Her Voice in the Wind Some days, I hear her. +++Not in dreams, +++but in the wind. It brushes past my cheek, +++carrying a lesson, +++a warning, +++a blessing. She speaks in birdsong, +++in the kettle’s whistle, +++in the way the light +++hits the sink. +++She’s not gone. +++She’s just quieter now. +++And I must lean in +++to hear her. U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a Zimbabwean-American poet, educator, and marathoner based between Boston and Lagos. She is the author of Soul Psalms (She Writes Press). Her work has appeared in MER and Write on the Dot. A …
Jane C. Miller I will burn with it I inherit a black mourning cap worn by my grandmother at 16 when her mother died. I am the only one it fits, such an ugly gift, its yarn rough as netted horsehair tied with a black ribbon, made by an unknown woman and passed down through generations to bury husbands, parents, children. Such intimate oppression my grandmother hid in a drawer. To throw it away, bad luck. When I put it on, I become grief’s severe matron, in my eyes the emptiness of frozen fields in Iowa. When crows…
Donna Vorreyer Boundaries A squeal rises from the garden: a rabbit caught on a wire fence while seeking a cluster of greens, the soft church of her body trembling as she churns her legs to wrench them free. When she escapes, she leaves behind a clump of downy coat. Her cry was like a child’s, small yet piercing, reminding me that I dwell forever in the country of mothers. Though my son has aged beyond its borders, this country demands allegiance. His need comes now through miles and screens, a call different from the rabbit, but just as…
Sara Wallace The Perfect Stage — “Be the Least in the Household of God,” Francis of Paola Come and watch me screw up, my son said. So, I went to his school’s concert but the music teacher put him in the back behind the piano, his face shadowed, hidden by the music stand. I sat there clapping for Brittney and tall wide Luna with her rough braid, for slight redheaded Asher and smiling Chip, for bongo drummers and violinists, for sopranos and bass players, my son just outside the lip of the spotlight, the black outline of his hair…
MER at AWP–All the Info! Off site. On Purpose. You’re Invited! Off Site. On Purpose. AWP 2026 Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 7:00 PM Westminster Hall, 519 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201 (Free Admission – Doors Open at 6:30 PM) SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present: Off site. On purpose. SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present “Off Site. On Purpose,” featuring many of today’s most inspiring women and nonbinary writers and poets! Join us for a night of life-affirming poetry on Wednesday, March…
Off Site. On Purpose. AWP 2026 Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 7:00 PM Westminster Hall, 519 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201 (Free Admission – Doors Open at 6:30 PM) SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present: Off site. On purpose. SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present “Off Site. On Purpose,” featuring many of today’s most inspiring women and nonbinary writers and poets! Join us for a night of life-affirming poetry on Wednesday, March 4, 2026 at 7:00 PM (Doors open at 6:30 PM), Westminster Hall, 519…