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…
Browsing: MER Online
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…
Megan Gannon Dispatch from Another Familiar Fairy Tale We did not abandon them there, though it was my idea: the two of them alone together in the wilderness of a Midwest shopping mall at Christmas, not holding hands but…
Heidi Fiedler Selkie Past the wolves, and goblins too, The seals fatten in the sun, Transforming from solid to liquid As they dive through swirls of seaweed. There our selkie swims free. Ebb. Flow. Crash. Want. Need. Love. When…
Hannah Grieco This is a story about a girl who fixes and lifts and carries and if she stops, who will know she’s somebody, and if she stops maybe she’ll be nobody, a nothing, a space where a person…
Hess Love Crab Cakes Supposedly Hester was out of her mind, however, she was also brilliant. Hester made and sold so many crab cakes that she was able to buy her freedom. Hester was my great, great, great…