Puma Perl Learning to Say No Keep your eyes open. Place your tongue along the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth. Do not smile. Smiles become yes, stretch into of course, and before you blink twice your clothes…
Browsing: MER Online
Jennifer Poteet Mother Comes Back as a Bee When I heard my name as a buzz in my ear, I knew she had come back as a bee. One, I hoped, without its stinger. My mother floated among my…
Parent (verb): to be or act as a parent. Words Ambriel Floyd Bostic James Callan Alisa Childress Hayes Davis Ashley Espinoza Jennifer Furner Mike Gray Francesca Leader Elizabeth O’Rourke Ellen June Wright Art Sally Brown Sofia Chapman Rachael Grad…
Literary Folio Curated by J.L. Scott The phrase “the joy of motherhood” has become somewhat trite, full of connotations held over from a time when nobody was willing to admit that not all of motherhood is, in fact, joyful.…
Anjali Vaidya A Trip to the Aquarium My five-year-old has always had a mind of her own. And by always I really do mean that; she’s been loudly expressing her own opinions since the time, as a fetus, when…
Elizabeth O’Rourke I Have Done Small Things today: have threaded the needle’s eye with the current favorite seafoam spool, have closed up the tear where the down spilled out of my daughter’s winter coat, have dragged the heavy bags…
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…
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…