Ambriel Floyd Bostic curating my daughter’s first period kit at age 10 three weeks before she leaves for camp maybe three years before she needs it I cull, fill baskets market aisles like fruit trees bounty heavy and over-ripe…
Browsing: MER Online
James Callan An Otherwise Quiet Space Beneath the sheets, my four-year-old kneads my thighs with his feet. In his sleep, or semi-sleep, the many long minutes leading up to it, he grips my leg hairs with his impossibly hot,…
Alisa Childress To Mom of Eight Years Ago, I often wonder what you would think of yourself now. Of you have become. You are almost unrecognizable. You have always been the woman who took pride in her appearance. You never…
Hayes Davis Letter to Myself as a New Father January 6, 2009 I know this finds you flushed with new, marveling at her swaddled heft, tiny mouth suckling your finger. You’re picturing the sky butterscotch and currant, the magic…
Ashley Espinoza 27 Miles “Should I have nursed her inside the room?” I asked my mom. As a single mother I needed her to drive me to the clinic, 27 miles from my home. “I don’t know, maybe?” My…
Jennifer Furner The Adventurers The locker room was boisterous with women’s voices and running water, and I navigated my way through naked bodies to the showers with my baby in my arms. A woman, fully dressed, sat behind glass…
Mike Gray The Stoic Birds are starting outside already, somewhere in the languid cool. My arms stretch overhead, body sleeved in fatigue, tired skin luxuriating beneath the sheets. A good day to silence the alarm. Burrow and nestle. Be…
Francesca Leader Milk and Blood My first child was six months old when I started working. I bought ten kinds of bottles, and she hated every one; she starved herself all day until I got home, then latched on…
Ellen June Wright Washing Day c. 1950 Hands finger a bright-white diaper, damp— then reach for a peg. She strains upward to grab the line; one more to clip and clip again as others flutter in the breeze, a…
Brian Clements A poem about mothers might contain a list of battles, homes, and film worlds where mothers appear, might comprise all instances of mothers of pearl, of invention, of babies and all wars, might list their unacknowledged legislation…