L. Bellee Jones-Pierce Early May The robins are late this year. I thought they’d never nest. Their piles of sticks and grass, dirtied cobweb nets, waxed and waned like a moon at the corner of our porch, growing…
Browsing: MER Online
Amy Lemmon Fracture Season My god the breaks we lived through— snapped eyeglasses, chipped dinner plate, pillowcase ripped, mug handle cracked, bent door-closer, crushed a bit more ++++++with each door-swing. No surprise, after all, to find ++++++two years…
Xiaoly Li A Small Goddess This freshly store-made tofu we stumble upon, grassy, nutty, melts in the mouth. That purple corn, chewy, earthy— your favorite, the stubborn root woven deep in us. I don’t mind a pilgrimage to…
U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo Her Voice in the Wind Some days, I hear her. +++Not in dreams, +++but in the wind. It brushes past my cheek, +++carrying a lesson, +++a warning, +++a blessing. She speaks in birdsong, +++in the kettle’s whistle,…
Jane C. Miller I will burn with it I inherit a black mourning cap worn by my grandmother at 16 when her mother died. I am the only one it fits, such an ugly gift, its yarn rough…
Donna Vorreyer Boundaries A squeal rises from the garden: a rabbit caught on a wire fence while seeking a cluster of greens, the soft church of her body trembling as she churns her legs to wrench them free.…
Sara Wallace The Perfect Stage — “Be the Least in the Household of God,” Francis of Paola Come and watch me screw up, my son said. So, I went to his school’s concert but the music teacher put him…
Katie Naoum Mud Season The edges of the day thaw too quickly, become sharp, jagged, like my children’s drawings or their cries. My children. They are so very young, so beautiful and difficult. There are moments when new phrases…
This year, MER is examining the ins and outs of mothers with families, both online and in our forthcoming print issues. Often mothers are the nuclei of families—of the legacies, obligations, and stories that orbit around us. Family of heritage,…
Bethany Bruno Love, Without the Ashes I come from a long line of women who held their pain quietly, who carried too much and asked for too little. Irish women. Women with too many kids, too little money, too much…