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…
Author: Mom Egg Review
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…
Nicole Callihan From Yesteryear (3/26) And even if I were. And even if I were. If there are 24 hours in a day and 6 people in a house, 12 hands to be washed, and also bodies, 2 of which fall on you, and a bottle of shampoo, 2 dreams of one man, one dream of one man and a woman, one dream of 2 men, one dream of my mother, one dream a crowded bed, 7 birds on a wire, 3 meals per day, one remaining box of frozen waffles, half a jar of peanut butter, not enough…
Patricia Starek Simple Request The request was simple Can my child come say hello to your child? With appropriate social distance of course It has been 8 weeks since this 7-year-old has seen a friend in the flesh Yes, come by on your walk He would love that And he waited With rapt breath Stood on the couch staring down the road Waiting for his friend to arrive Within minutes There were requests for scooters Running around the block Sleeves were torn Masks were off Bubbles in the air Nerf guns Soccer balls Laughter Sweet laughter His mom,…
Eileen Cleary Orphan Sky For John Keats Don’t say the father died; say night falls like a father off a horse. Don’t say the boy misses him. Or that the executor betrays. Say father’s a pink carnation the child recalls as love but who left him in the care of no such sorrel affection. Do not mention the mother’s desertion. Zinnia says mother’s soaked in sorrow. So sorry. And she’s come home to die. Strike this from his memory. At least until he lodges in the quarters over the surgery where no flowers speak. Then let him name…
Karen George Frida Kahlo’s My Nurse and I, 1937 I. Infant with an adult head, held loosely, near falling from a wet nurse’s arms—face covered by a dark mask, a grimace. Lush foliage reaches her shoulders. Sky of raindrops mirrors two pearls of milk leaking like teardrops from the right breast. The left a translucent network, clusters of milk beads—tiny gold flowers. Frida stares into space, empty. Doesn’t suckle. The milk, dry stems, jabs her open mouth. Any minute she will choke. II. I open my mother’s door, hold my breath. Her dread rivets me. She whimpers, tells…
Jen Karetnick Advised to Keep a Journal During Lockdown, I Pretend I Am in Pompeii and hold a glass to the wall of the world hissing with a language invented each day anew What sibilance seeps into my ear is mine to lionize in this chamber or censure and leave to petrify in amber for future generations to interpret after prolonged and diligent unearthing Quaran-Teened It does not matter anymore what has been said of destinies lined up in columns and saved like linens in bridal chests. I have become a painted fence harried by…
Tina Kelley Wolf Tree Alone in a field, it grew in every direction, asterisk of wood. If it were fireworks: chrysanthemum, crosette, palm, peony. If emotion: surprise, joy, optimism. If vocabulary: fractal, excrescent. A philosophy: If growth stops in one direction, try the other. Lean up from gravity. Make more and lower branches, holes, snags, shelter. Home to invertebrates, thirty times the birdsong of skinny trees, sixty percent more mammal scat than in crowded upstart copses. Sieving the wind for spare kites. Named for its lone-ness, its greedy stance towards sunlight, the one tree left for shade in the field, it’s often crowded…
Ellen Kombiyil In The Old Apartment Before Language Fully Bloomed, The Landlord Tried To Evict Us The skeleton key lost, mismatched furniture hauled to the truck, Ma hollerin I’m ready to be done with this place, re-tracing her pacing worn through blue linoleum. Ma, don’t fret. The landlord won’t give it back: each cupboard scratch each picture frame nail hole she’ll ding you for until the deposit’s gone. What was it, Ma you expected to become? Traipsing down hall steps, careening, plaster to wood banister foot over ankle a little violently & startling in the near dark. …
K.T. Landon Who Are We in Heaven if we are perfect, our past a meadow burning in our wake? Who are you, mother, if not disappointed by me? Who am I without my self-righteous superiority? After the fire a different forest rises. Imagine, after so much history, to meet, unarmored. Could we bear to know how much we loved each other? K.T. Landon is the author of Orange, Dreaming (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She was a finalist in Narrative’s Ninth Annual Poetry Contest and her work has appeared in Passages North, Tinderbox Poetry Review, and…