Browsing: MER Online

CHERYL BOYCE-TAYLOR STILL THE SWEETEST WORDS I EVER HEARD: Mom, I found my girl, she reminds me of you. Her name is Deisha. Mom I’m getting married walk me down the aisle. Mom I’m coming home for your birthday…

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EILEEN CLEARY THE WAY WE FLED No branch silhouettes the snow. Tree limbs cut down by some bastard or buzz saw, chipped remains scattered afield around the stump as if they’d tried to escape the carnage, the way we…

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ZEINA HASHEM BECK TRIPTYCH: VOICE Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her most recent collection, Louder than Hearts, won the 2016 May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, World Literature Today,…

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REBECCA HART OLANDER FAWN From the age of fourteen, some weekends, I took the train from Gloucester, MA, where I lived with my mom, to North Station in Boston, on my way to my father’s house in Dorchester.…

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LESLÉA NEWMAN #MeToo piano teacher sitting beside me on the bench sliding his hand beneath my behind; dentist reclining my chair all the way back and resting his tools on my chest; friend of my father’s pulling me onto…

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IDRISSA SIMMONDS DAWN PRAYER CALL on the line with my dying mother i choose words that land soft as fingers in the sweet of her scalp. sometime ago I became her patron saint of hope and faith a calm…

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JESSICA GOODFELLOW NIGHTSCAPE WITH RANDOM INTERSECTION Late at night a telephone booth becomes a cage, a trap— its overhead bulb a spotlight. Someone has been watching me— a pantless man. He body-slams the folding door. Dropping the phone, I…

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