Sparrow Mary McLaughlin Slechta Juanetta passed the abandoned house every year since third grade and paid it no mind. She didn’t pass close because now she was in high school, she walked in the street. But one afternoon, when the street was freshly tarred, she was hurrying beside the hedge along the property and without warning pitched forward and vomited. She ducked into the yard to think. Her sister had a baby at fourteen and looked like she was following in those footsteps. Mama never said, “None y’all girls worth a damn,” but inside her head Juanetta heard those…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Giving Up on the Professor Julia Strayer Most of us live underground now, which is fine by me. Under the city, under the streets, because that’s the only place safe for now. Scorching temps and fast fires left the earth coughing up dirt in the wind—too hot to survive above ground. Those of us not rich enough to buy our way out and cluster at the poles have turned into mole rats. It’s cool underground, even as the earth bakes overhead. Sometimes there are cave ins and people die. But I tell myself people died senselessly above ground…
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…
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…