Kelly Bargabos All There Is The receptionist who collects the tickets unlocks the front door. The narrow hallway fills up. The line is organized and orderly, for the most part. They only get rowdy when someone takes too long to load their tray. “Good Morning. How are you?” I ask. Such an asinine question. How good could they be? They’re here for lunch. I’m sure things could be better. But I ask anyway. I always try to smile, look them in the eye. I want them to know I see them. They’re not invisible, not to me. I…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Sarah W. Bartlett Coming Home “Where we want to be is where we ought to live” – SWB, summer 1996 Apparently, I’ve been searching for a sense of home since childhood. In the great woods behind our house when family connection broke down. In music to which I devoted after-school hours. In writing to name and to understand. In exploring nature for answers and guidance. In endless gardens planted, and myriad growing things nurtured. I was an adult before I discovered my soul home. It perches on a Vermont hillside among maples with a permanent 180˚ western…
Joanna Bettelheim Our Ex, Carol My father married my mother, whose name is Carolyn. After they divorced, he dated Carol. My mother bought a house in an adjacent neighborhood, keeping me in the same school district. My new bedroom had been a family room; the washer and dryer rumbled in the closet while I slept. We tried to move our cats, Jack and Jill, but Jack was too stubborn (“too stupid” according to my mom) to make it stick, finding his way home over and over again for a month before our neighbors agreed to adopt him. My dad…
Laura Dennis It’s Not Always Headline News Every morning, the same routine. Sip my coffee. Scan the news. Gasp at the pain in my gut. The headlines alone drive me to close my laptop and stare off into space. The still, small voice in my heart likes it when this happens, for then it can cease being both still and small. Instead, it gets to bang around inside, begging me to do something, anything, to help. Yet for a long time, I could not see how. I’m a single mom of three who hasn’t seen child support in months.…
Lisa Hase-Jackson Cucumbers in July I keep forgetting to buy cucumbers. Other things on my mind, I guess, things I cannot forget, like my mother’s girlhood name, the one my aunts and uncles still use. Cee Cee. A nickname invented by their youngest brother when he couldn’t pronounce “sister.” Other things on my mind, too, like my mother’s cancer is no longer in remission, that she is going to die soon. None of us have forgotten the way last summer’s chemo took her hair or the way radiation made her bones brittle, took what little fat left on…
Lauren Sharpe Domesticity, Now Sometimes, I pretend to be a baby so that my 4-year-old can pretend to teach me how to talk. She tells me a word and I repeat it back to her. Tonight, we snuggled in together, her face smooth and soft, as she called me baby and told me it was ok. “Don’t cry,” she told me, holding me tighter. I pretended to cry, softly. “Are you wearing mascara?” “Yes,” I said, unlike a baby at all. I was very content to stay there, both of us falling asleep in each other’s arms. Often,…
Megan Sound Bright, Shining Light I imagine some day I will tell my daughter about how, when she occupied my womb, I ate foods I believed would make her strong. I will tell her it must have worked because before she was a month old, when lying on her tummy she could push herself up and turn her head. When I tell her these stories of the earliest days of our time together, there will be a part of me that aches; the blank space at the beginning of my own life expands each time I realize all…
Review by Tsaurah Litzky Birthdays Before and After, Puma Perl’s fifth solo collection, presents, as the title suggests, a compendium of poems, thirty-eight in all, in which she examines the woof and weave of her life. She recalls her birthdays and their aftermath, not necessarily in chronological order, as well as her adventures and companions along the way. This is a unique kind of poetic memoir where past and present alternate to create a document pulsing with life. The poems she creates bleed, breathe and foster a heightened awareness that is rare and amazing.The first time I…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett This chapbook of poetry by award-winning Ellaraine Lockie – her 14th – is immediately unusual in that every poem in the collection has won its own individual contest award. That fact might intimidate the reader from going any further. But rest assured, Lockie’s voice is accessible, earthy, humorous; she is no stranger to verbal wordsmithing from the heart and experience. All of which make these poems the more delightful for their directness and relevance to a range of women. Mothers, wives, lovers, daughters – all will find resonance in some if not all…
Review by Emily Webber Even the luckiest people do not manage to get through life unscathed, and yet there are always moments of beauty and grace. The 38 small stories in Jayne Martin’s collection, Tender Cuts, reminds us of this certainty in life. In each of these stories, there are moments of loveliness that are also mixed with pain and sadness. Sometimes the grace is just in what we can survive and the fact that we still manage to move forward. Every story, none longer than a single page and many much shorter, is proceeded by a drawing, all…