Susanna Rich Knock on Wood, Grandmother Mumchy taught me, if anyone says anything good. And not just any wood. Can’t be a door, its jambs, or a windowsill. Knocking on doors or windows (as others might to be let…
Browsing: MER Online
Lynne Schmidt Bodies Like Gods It would be easier to imagine that there was no blood. That she did not scream in agony as she waited for you to leave. It is easier to pretend that that lighting…
Hallie Waugh Invoking My Mother As I Sit to Write a Poem Winter nights I’d watch her at the sewing case, rolling thread between her thumb and forefinger. Out would pop a knot, as if mending the hem of…
As I braid one of my daughter’s hair and the other waits her turn, I tell them what I am doing. I show them how to separate the hair in sections, how each braid is comprised of three parts, and…
Chelsea Fanning Virgin Mary as Teakettle Praise be to you, spattered with chicken grease and garlic fat, the cerulean of your enamel like a blue mantle, sanguine in its austerity. Down your throat holy faucet waters pour, impregnating your…
Tamara L. Panici Mama’s Lessons on Sarmale Uită-te, to make sarmale, you must understand the difference between wanted and unwanted. The key being a perception, a human invention. Do not forget. You are both wanted and unwanted. Seen…
RaShell R. Smith-Spears A Writer Speaks of Lineage My foremothers were magic. Their nimble fingers squeezed syntax into cauldrons of rhythm and rolled juju across pages that glared with our erasure; they poured images into white spaces defined by…
Eco-poetry: Nature Through the Lens of Motherhood We live in fraught ecological times, as unchecked-climate change threatens our planet. And though we—humankind—may be the invasive species, “we are,” as the poet Ashia Ajani writes, “nature, entangled in her movements.”…
Hannah Baker Saltmarsh Love, Earth Mother Do you know how many times I’ve started over, without you, on my own? Once, in a beetle’s floral gown, I scraped together a semblance of a planet. I breathe so quietly…
Anna Laura Reeve Exile Anna Laura Reeve is a poet living and gardening near the Tennessee Overhill region,…