J.P. Howard Tanka for my Son During a Pandemic Our teen wants to stay safe inside our home each day We shelter him in Our home, the safest space now We Mamas don’t push, just love Haibun for Resilience during a Pandemic we are writing our way through grief. we are finding new ways to be joyful. we are telling fear to have a back seat. some days we are scared and alone. we are never truly alone. we are only a phone call or a poem away from someone who loves us. we are love and…
Author: Mom Egg Review
We Stand With the People The Offing Dear readers, We have been and will always be committed to the work of Black, Indigenous, POC, Women, GNC, LGBTQ+, Disabled, and all marginalized peoples. It is with a heavy heart that we have seen the current administration feign ignorance and responsibility during a global pandemic. It is also that same administration that has been pivotal in normalizing abuses of power, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism. At this very moment people have taken to the streets all across this nation and made it abundantly clear: WE WILL NOT LET THIS STAND! But…
Curated by Tara Lynn Masih Riding the Dangerous Wind I’m so very glad I was finally able to take up Marjorie’s standing invitation to edit a flash fiction portfolio for the Mom Egg. Marjorie is one of those rare editors whose commitment to writers has only grown over the many years I’ve known her. She’s created a special space and has outlasted many lit journals because of the relationship she builds with her writers and her community. Back in January, I solicited 10 writers whose work I admire for the portfolio. I asked them to create a flash…
A Literary Folio Curated by J. P. Howard Featured Poets Anna Limontas-Salisbury Danielle Stelluto Jennifer Franklin J.P. Howard Kim Brandon Nicole Callihan Patricia Starek I write this during an unprecedented time in the world. Many, if not most of us around the country/world, have been sheltered-in for months, due to COVID-19 and the current pandemic. This pandemic has caused enormous loss of life, incredible stress and collective grief; as I write this, thousands of protesters are marching and chanting outside of my Brooklyn, NY window seeking justice for black lives, violently taken away from us too soon,…
Review by Emily Webber In Kari L. O’Driscoll’s memoir, Truth Has a Different Shape, she assumes the role in her family, even as a young child, as the one to try to keep order and stability. The memoir begins during her childhood and relays the long and winding road to unravel this protective instinct as a mother and a caregiver in her adult life. Well-chosen details and immersive writing make this memoir an intimate portrait of a fractured family and how one may approach forgiveness and healing even as childhood trauma threads through one’s life. O’Driscoll’s family consists of…
Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Isolation Welcome to the Mom Egg Review June VOX “Isolation” folio. It doesn’t take a pandemic to create isolation. Grief and depression can cause it, as can bullying and separation. Motherhood can also result in aloneness despite being in the company of others. And at times we seek out solitude through seclusion and privacy. The poems in this folio explore the many faces of isolation. Grief and longing for life before the pandemic is made palpable through inanimate objects that can have no memory of “the before” in Marjorie Maddox’s poem,…
By Ana C.H. Silva One of my poetry mothers, Sharon Dolin, once gently challenged me, “Who are you reading right now?” I appreciated what she was really saying: to be a good writer, you need to be a great reader. I stuttered at first, but then, from my heart, the list began; the poems that made me feel less alone, the collections that held onto the mystery but affirmed the scraps of my understanding of the world. The ones that made me catch my breath, or breath more easily. Every poet has a legacy she draws from, essential and…
Review by Lara Lillibridge “This book is for all who have touched this and all who suffer in silent trauma and grief either directly or indirectly. Therefore, this book is for all of us.” (5) Melissa Valentine was born in Oakland, California in 1984 to a white father and black mother. One of six children, they lived “on the edge of prosperity and desolation.” (8) Closest in age to her brother, Junior, Melissa was his playmate and accomplice, growing up in his shadow as they pleaded with each other over and over to “do better.” Right after getting out…
Review by Ana C.H. Silva The opening epigraph of Rocked by the Waters, Poems of Motherhood, edited by Margaret Hasse and Athena Kildegaard, offers this collection “to everyone rocked by the waters.” Immediately I thought of my post-partum doula who reassured me, in my first week, that I was doing well “surrendering to the wave.” While I white-knuckled two infants at my breasts, panic in my eyes, she nodded,“You’re letting it all wash over you.” I was skeptical of the compliment at the time, but years later, I’m sure of it. As the 136 poems in this collection…
Review by Deborah Bacharach Dayna Patterson’s first full length poetry collection If Mother Braids a Waterfall is chockfull of Mormons. Their photos grace not just the cover but intersperse with and frame the poems throughout the book. (And reflecting some of the themes, the polygamist great-grandfather stands alone, the sister wives all together.) And it is chockfull of post-Mormons, those who choose to leave the church, but, as the poems explore, will always have it as part of their identity. The first poem, “The Mormons are Coming” combines that ominous refrain with all the benign and in fact…