Donna Peizer The Haircut “Lisa,” I want you to get your hair cut,” I said for the umpteenth time using the voice that insists that mother knows best. My 13-year-old looked at me and sighed, worn down by the…
Browsing: MER Online
Sally Quon Bad Mom I should have left the night I told him I was pregnant, when he beat me until I thought for sure I would miscarry. But I was young and scared, living in a city where…
Lisa Taylor Epiphany Nature can be both soothing and instructive. I am working from home and using the back porch as my office. It’s peaceful. I can work and still enjoy the antics of local creatures. Birds, anoles, snakes,…
Maria Mazziotti Gillan Snow Falls Thick outside the windows of Saint Marguerite retreat house. If only my mother had not died more than 20 years ago, I’d call her, tell her, my practical, no-nonsense mother, to stop working…
Lisa Ampleman Unremarkable My deepest sadnesses are completely ordinary. Not the predicament of roundworms as the shuttle Columbia, making its way homeward, is eaten through by heated plasma, leaving their thermos falling solo through the stratosphere. No…
Nicole Brooks The Mother Speaks I shrink to a diamond My daughter palms. I’m squat As the littlest Russian doll. She relishes my dispersion Of light, holds me to the Morning sun. Secures me In a golden ring’s claws,…
Susan Calvillo Urban Legend I don’t make love, orgasm, or stimulate my nipples forget about cuddle napping, doing yoga, or cat cow poses I don’t practice labor positions with squats, lunges, or deep pliés I refuse to sit…
Olivia Cronk excerpt from “Mothering as Archive as Textural Surface” With Visual Art by Anne Zielenski Fleming A Quipu That Remembers Nothing consisted of [Cecilia Vicuña’s] act of thinking about a quipu—the knotted cord method of communication used by…
Jamie Etheridge We are (not) fish tales She can’t breathe and I can’t breathe because we are underwater. Only she has no gills and I have no fins and we are not fish. This is not a fairytale. Not…
Cheryl J. Fish Abecedarian: Spit Three Times After a compliment, after a friend or stranger remarked how Beautiful, your grandchildren, my grandmother spit three times. Concentrating on our foreheads, saying “poo, poo, poo.” Delivering protection against that dreadful Evil…