Browsing: MER Online

Nicole Callihan From Yesteryear (3/26) And even if I were. And even if I were. If there are 24 hours in a day and 6 people in a house, 12 hands to be washed, and also bodies, 2 of…

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Patricia Starek Simple Request The request was simple Can my child come say hello to your child? With appropriate social distance of course It has been 8 weeks since this 7-year-old has seen a friend in the flesh…

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Eileen Cleary Orphan Sky    For John Keats Don’t say the father died; say night falls like a father off a horse. Don’t say the boy misses him. Or that the executor betrays. Say father’s a pink carnation the…

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Karen George   Frida Kahlo’s My Nurse and I, 1937 I. Infant with an adult head, held loosely, near falling from a wet nurse’s arms—face covered by a dark mask, a grimace. Lush foliage reaches her shoulders. Sky of…

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Jen Karetnick   Advised to Keep a Journal During Lockdown, I Pretend I Am in Pompeii and hold a glass to the wall of the world hissing with a language invented each day anew What sibilance seeps into my…

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Tina Kelley   Wolf Tree Alone in a field, it grew in every direction, asterisk of wood. If it were fireworks: chrysanthemum, crosette, palm, peony. If emotion: surprise, joy, optimism. If vocabulary: fractal, excrescent. A philosophy: If growth stops in one direction, try…

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Ellen Kombiyil In The Old Apartment Before Language Fully Bloomed, The Landlord Tried To Evict Us The skeleton key lost, mismatched furniture hauled to the truck, Ma hollerin I’m ready to be done with this place, re-tracing her pacing…

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K.T. Landon   Who Are We in Heaven if we are perfect, our past a meadow burning in our wake? Who are you, mother, if not disappointed by me? Who am I without my self-righteous superiority? After the fire…

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Marjorie Maddox Inside One house and this rhythm of ritual: 6:00 am, 8:00 am, 4:00 pm—our laptops open in the kitchen, the living room, a bedroom, Hellos at the refrigerator, while ascending/ descending the stairs, the constant tap of…

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