Jessica Feder-Birnbaum Just A Dog The dog is picky with food. His glands are swollen. Blood work shows Canine Lymphoma. Chemotherapy offers a shot at remission. There is rarely a cure. The kids say you favor the dog. Not your…
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Kathy Kurz Flesh “This is for you, Mom.” My youngest daughter, Julia, is home from college for the first time proudly showing me ‘my’ tattoo—sprays of lilacs and dogwood blossoms covering her shoulder. I try to be pleased. She explains:…
Lorraine Currelley Under The Bridge on Saturday mornings mama would dress us children and take us under the bridge. under the bridge was our name for the marketplace in spanish harlem located under a bridge. it was also known as…
Alexandra Beers Henry at the Hair Salon My 14 years’ son sits in salons admiring himself, discussing intently his intentions with cowlicks and product and natural wave. I indulge this vanity. Not like my own mother who saw but did…
It’s Complicated… A folio curated by Marjorie Tesser As mothers, we are involved in the business of nurture. Sometimes this goes smoothly; motherhood can be a source of love and joy. But at other times, mothering can be complicated. Signals…
Morals by Abigail Walthausen What can I give without Joseph, Doula and sheepwives and cowwives? A range of applied pieties, against pan proteins for storybook farmers for the beauty of the earth against a token virus. Every coffee ground to…
The Loss by Dorsía Smith Silva At first, it begins so simple. The pain itself is nothing, something you control, by default. You recognize the strange violence, as it drifts through the pelvis and lands in the vulva. Now…
The Stepdaughters Are the Wicked Ones by Alexis Quinlan Scalding sand kicked to cool, cruel clouds roll past, white on light and happy giddy girls, volleyball reddening wrists. Spike it, one cries. To the side, new wife learning blood…
To My Twenty-Six-Year-Old Daughter by Connie Post You are sitting in front of me two days before my hysterectomy telling me you are having a baby in July asking questions only the moon can answer the wooden grain in…
Beta splendens (Siamese Fighting Fish) by Paulette A. Pashibin Beautiful carnivores: curious, watchful, with strange appetites. Females eat their eggs. Strong males build bubble nests, fortresses against mother hunger. All are selectively bred — like you, daughter — for…