When Words Clung to Paper Dawn Raffel The water rose slowly at first and then in a rush. This had happened so often that now we evacuated quickly, with maximum efficiency: children in hand, the papers stating our identity, laptops, cash, a few ragged photos, snacks. Off we went, up the desolate peak to wait and complain. Days, weeks. New children were born. Time swam. Nothing was drying. Rain became snow, and the water was sealed with an icy crust. The city remained submerged. * By springtime, those who were judged to be physically fit were suited up with…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Honesty Sherrie Flick The steam rises, it’s a choir rubbing up my fat belly, then swirling to a hallelujah at the ceiling. Thirty-six weeks. I’m an island of flesh in this clawfoot tub. The water laps at me each time I shift, topsy-turvy, then settling flat, somber again. The storm outside thunders down in heaving splats, polka-dotting the concrete, seeping in somewhere I’m sure. Water, water, water. Heat and musk and love. That’s what put me here in the first place. What I’d wanted was a kitten, alone in the big, old house, as it creaked and talked back.…
Feral Things Rosie Forrest When the siren first sounds, I am grateful to be settled in the basement, or perhaps the siren sent us to the basement during dinner. It smells like lavender dryer sheets, and my tongue works a shred of chicken loose from my molar. Against my chest the baby is asleep, or I am wishing her to be. “Is it a regular thing, these sirens?” I ask my husband. I haven’t lived here long enough to know. “Not every day,” he tells me. “In the summertime more often, but not every day.” “We should spruce up…
My Mother in Corners Claudia Smith I believed my mother was water, my father fire. Swarthy, salty-sweat, flash-fires she soothed and tempered. She scrubbed the hardened soap from the corners of sinks and counters, the pee from the grout around the toilet. He missed. His mother didn’t teach him properly. Mom complained when he wasn’t around, but not much when he was with us. When we camp, my mother keeps the fire. My father is the one who builds, but she stokes. She is the first one up and the last one to bed. We camp in the piney woods near a lake. We don’t swim, but we…
What the River Knows Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello People tell me I am good with babies. Children like me, they say, this little so-and-so doesn’t smile for just anybody, that little such-and-such who never talks to strangers must be pried off my leg in tears. My neighbor holds her rounding belly and says I should have one or two of my own. My sister writes me a letter to say she dreamed she gave birth to seven children. Knowing her, she wrote this unflinchingly. My friend calls to say she dreamed I would have three children, and when she dreams…
Assumption Emma Bolden The snow stopped before I was born, but I was a girl before the rain started. That was when I had a different body, all baby fat and fast flashes of motion that stilled into sleep. That was before my body made its breasts and hips, before Mama looked me up and down and said my body was half grown but I needed to mind because my mouth wasn’t, before she snuck out the back door under night’s blanket so she could make herself another baby to love until it became a girl. The summer my…
Grand Diva, Interrupted by Anna Limontas-Salisbury When my daughter announced I was going to become a grandmother, I was still processing motherhood. I was only coming to understand that the role shifts, but does not end. My daughter was beginning her own family and my son completing high school. I was now more of a coach, cheering them on, as my own mother has been to me for years since becoming an adult. My granddaughter is the 6th generation first-born daughter, since my great-grandmother’s birth in Charleston, South Carolina, 1907. My great-grandmother raised her daughter, my mother, and in…
Single Parenting Through the Pandemic by Danielle Stelluto I would have never predicted that my 33rd birthday on March 11th of 2020 would have been the last time we would be stepping outside of our home without needing protective gear. Single parenting under a pandemic has been challenging. Playing numerous roles all under one roof setting. Home was our sacred place we’d escape too from all else but now it has become the central place for all activities and responsibilities. It gets heavy trying to navigate parenting, cooking, cleaning, teaching, entertaining, town hall meetings, and trying to carve out…
Jennifer Franklin APRIL 2020, NYC The winds shake the windows. It has rained for six days as if the gods are punishing us for hubris and hatred. Without school to tire her, my daughter cannot sleep through the night and wakes, talking to herself searching for the key to the kitchen door kept locked for her safety. The dog doesn’t stir when I leave the bed. My daughter flails her body back and forth at the edge of her bed as if she anticipates another seizure. The death count is rising and friends are sick, sleeping all day in…
Kim Brandon Love On The Front Line five patients died today what we wrap in sheets what is disposable now is a battle lost for humanity finally, the day ends time to head home a reprieve from war back to normal there is a note on my front door in purple magic marker “Go round the back” my family has set up a tent with a green hose a bottle of orange soap blue mouthwash white towels yellow plastic flip flops a gray sweat suit a second note – from my husband’s hand “We need you to sleep…