Mireya Pérez-Bustillo Everything You Need to Know About the 5th Grade She knew that the vision would come on the corner elm tree because she was so good in school she heard that Our Lady came to the three children of Fatima and that St. Ignatius fell wounded then found the Lord and was saved and that St. Genevieve saved the city of Paris from that barbarian Attila and that St. Lucy gave her life for her faith and they took her eyes so why couldn’t she have the vision too so she stared at the tree ’til her…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Pamela L. Laskin Shared Room: A ghazal To Elissa, 64 You sixteen and me eighteen we shared a room college and its chaos inside our room graduation, jobs, a wedding in bigger rooms after came the babies no longer room for reams of conversation or quiet rooms marriage, sometimes children found us in ruins secrets kept in vaults locked in a room again, we open house to our heart’s room today another sorrow invades our room together we can climb in our shared room. Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department at The City College, where…
Sherese Francis She Who Is The Image of God There’s a holiness that She carries in Her hands, like a Moses budding a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttering to freedom. She crafts with a mother tongue whispering in Her body, a code of thrones in trees and herbs; Her hips are a lotus blossoming from the mud; She tends a garden of marigolds with the dirt from Her grave; She carries a storehouse of rice in Her hair and on Her journey made a jambalaya constellation to direct Her people home. Oh the glory of Her fractured sun radiating through…
Jane Yolen Grandlings Between us, we have eight, all of whom but one, have a fall of decisions before them. Only one is out of school. How ancient our own concerns of education now seem, new shoes, a date for the prom, notebooks, and a pop quiz, none of which—though it may have felt like it at the time, could actually kill us. The New Mother looks at her child, afraid to touch him, breathe on him, two masks not enough. This virus endangers the joy of birth. She cannot rid herself of a terrible fear. Death–hers, the…
Susan McGee Bailey Rainbow Time Months into Covid-19, time has lost all precision. Days and weeks have a pleasant, blurry quality similar to my daughter’s rainbows. The ones done in water color, no clear lines of demarcation, one color blending into the next. Amy rejects these paintings and turns to her magic markers. “But Amy, your paintings are lovely, they’re like the rainbows we see in the sky.” She looks up. Pauses. Then returns to her drawing. Amy has developmental challenges and this is her first morning home in four months. She is fifty now, but retains the joy…
Serena Agusto-Cox Remote Work Home office view of the quiet yard. The birds bang their heads into glass, a moment of blindness. Mating songs, angry tweets, territorial posturing on feeders. Perhaps, my office is not soundless. Elementary school streaming, dogs barking over microphones, teachers calling out names, looking for answers from the disengaged. Whispered answers, requests to repeat the question. Draft client text, peppered with child-like giggles, rather than COVID-19’s spread. Remote work done by drones among distraction would be less human. In the distance my (l)only child marched into an age of social distance six inches between…
Rebecca Brock Good Housekeeping (America, during Covid, during Trump) She keeps trying to get her house in order pretending with the rest of them that the sun won’t melt the earth, that the seas won’t burn, that the land won’t disappear under water or ice or our own triggered destruction. She keeps going back to the dishes, to the meals, to washing the clothes, to worrying over the state of the carpet which is funny in a sad way if you knew the state of her house– the way the windows leak, the way the doors have to be snugged…
Lisa Romano Licht In the Midst of Fear, My Daughter’s Choice Taught Me to Step Aside Yesterday, as my daughter pulled into the driveway after work, I anxiously opened the garage door. Leaving her jacket, bag and shoes behind, she went into the downstairs laundry room. After tossing her clothes and face mask into the washer, she scrubbed her hands and put on the robe I had left there. Then she went upstairs to shower. I followed, wearing gloves and sanitizing doorknobs and light switches. I don’t know how my twenty-two-year-old arrived at this moment in time. Her…
Chelsea Reiter Pregnancy Loss in a Pandemic Is Just Like You’d Imagine In a pandemic, you’re privileged to move from a place where the numbers are high to a place where the numbers are low. In a pandemic, you’re privileged to get pregnant after 10 seconds of trying, and even more so when your best friend is pregnant too. In a pandemic, you’re privileged to have Nick, a husband with a steady gaze, strong hands, and beautiful blue eyes, who is offended by the “10 seconds of trying” remark. Oops! In a pandemic, your co-workers don’t get suspicious when…
Alexandra Umlas Sheltering with Daughters Sometimes a shelter is a house. Sometimes a house is a home. Sometimes a home is a prison. I tell myself that you are not missing out, that I can be friend, teacher, mother, fence, blanket, glass of water. For fun, I brew your first cups of coffee, stirred with heaping tablespoons of sugar, tempered with milk. I ex-out everything in March, make bread with expired yeast, mourn its tired, tentative half-rise. We clean floorboards, dust shelves, scooter through the park every afternoon at 4:30, the dog zagging around us, the nature center’s gates…