Meghan Trask Smith First Fever The fosterling burning in this bed calls out for her mother in a fever dream, a woman who is not me. Her mother is handing her unicorn earrings when I wake her for Advil. There is no touching moment when I force the medicine into her mouth. On the car ride to the doctor’s the next morning, the fosterling specifies that the dream earrings were real, not clippies. Even though the nurse wears bright pink scrubs and kindly asks, I have no idea what her medical history is. I struggle to remember her birthday.…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Onita Morgan Edwards Clean House I ignored my husband’s wishes by taking in foster children after he died. I wanted to save the world, and while my life wasn’t always rosy, I was obviously in better shape than some parents. Our children had never been in foster care. We were responsible parents. That’s what I told myself as I cast judgement on parents who chose drugs or alcohol or mates over the needs of their children. I’d suck my teeth and turn up my nose at the thought of their selfishness. Awful humans who’d brought children into the world…
Eloísa Pérez-Lozano Lucky I stroke the wisps of hair on your head and caress your soft and spoiled skin as you suckle mi seno in our bed to the soundtrack of crickets outside. I think about how safe you are thanks to a genetic lottery you won a double helix laced with freedom grown in my star-spangled matriz. Hundreds of miles away, at the edge of two countries a swollen breast leaks like el rio coursing between them. A baby’s meal is interrupted milk dribbles down her chin as a pezón is pulled from her mouth and she disappears…
Janet Garber Baby Love Wet babykisses circle my face, delicious, as in the morning’s almost-rain I walk the track. Through my cottonball ears I hear the swoosh of cars and trucks and a big fire engine chugging its way home. This is my time most early mornings while my legs do the heavy work to puzzle over my life’s decisions, all the turning points, all the moments of could-have-been. At thirty posed on the brink of single parenthood, I feared the outcomes of staying or going, hiding his toys from him, packing his clothes, and carrying him off to a…
Jennifer L. Freed “Have You Locked up the Knives?” In answer to Ms. K, Department of Children and Family Services Staples, thumb tacks, twist ties, tooth picks. The tips of unfolded paperclips. The spirals of wire binding her college-ruled notebooks. Sticks. Stones. Safety pins. The seashells she gathered last summer, if smashed underfoot. Shards of any water glass, jelly jar, ketchup bottle. Tweezers Earring posts Fingernails Don’t you see? My daughter doesn’t need a knife. (Published with the approval of the poet’s daughter) Origami —the paper cranes you used to make, then unmake— hidden flaps opening, exposing fold…
Nicole Hospital-Medina the PAPER poem I found the paper on the kitchen counter under the peacock blue Parenting magazine. ~ I would enter a forest of animals, a zebra, el loro, the ugly ducklings. I would decorate a river with golden butterflies and lay my eggs on it. ~ The words: Anora Miscarriage Test results. This should be in a folder, a drawer, a binder. ~ It would be like Easter. All my eggs floating safely on a raft with the wink of sun behind them. ~ Or, should it be in that adorable polka dot pregnancy journal I…
Margo Berdeshevsky God Bless The Child That’s Got His Own (for labor days poised to shatter) My friends are losing mothers and fathers My world is losing air Today my father died, he says to me My friend who climbs from the sea I say that every day, he says, Today my father died, But he keeps living and hanging And I am remembering all the things I never wanted to hold He says — you will let go he will let go the branch when he is Ready I nod, yes, he says, climbing the hill…
Review by Michelle Wilbert One Less River by Terry Blackhawk—founding director (1995-2015) of Detroit’s InsideOut Literary Arts Project—is a quixotic voyage over and around water and the creaturely life that lives in, and from, the ponds, lakes and oceans around us. It is song of lament—of loss and grief yet imbued with a sense of the deepest trust in process; in time; in the fact that placing our attention on what is here—now—in this moment, is a trustworthy, reliable and ancient path through (paraphrasing poet Seamus Heaney) our contending discourses of consciousness. This collection of poems starts with the…
Review by Laura Dennis In recent months, my life has been crisscrossed by all sorts of wounds, from minor injuries that refuse to heal to the global fractures caused by inequality, racism, and most recently, coronavirus. Not that these problems are all that new–even the virus probably arrived earlier than we think. Still, we struggle to articulate them and we seek some form of response, as Ann E. Wallace’s début poetry collection, Counting by Sevens, reveals. Divided into three parts, Counting by Sevens both exposes and embodies myriad aspects of the human experience. The first section, “America, Another Day,”…
Review by Sandra Anfang Ann Keniston is the author of two previously published poetry collections, The Caution of Human Gestures (David Robert Books, 2005), and the chapbook, November Wasps: Elegies (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is the co-editor of The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st Century Anthology (McFarland, 2012), and the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants in poetry. Widely published in poetry journals, Keniston is professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno and a poetry teacher in local schools. In this dexterously crafted collection of poems, the reader is invited into the interior life…