TWO HYBRIDS FROM PEG ALFORD PURSELL GLORY, CLOUD, AND EGG The cloud holds some amount of the sea. All of the eggs of her daughter had been cradled within her too, the mother vessel. It’s just science. In…
Browsing: MER Online
The Way We Worked, In Three Acts by Jamie Wagman I. Long Ago My grandmother worked in kitchens, professional and home, pouring coffee and working a register, working from recipes and working from memory. Her hands were smooth velvet,…
Threads of Connection by Nancy Gerber My grandmother was an artist with needle and thread. By the time I was born, she had retired as a seamstress who took in sewing to help my grandfather, a tailor, make ends…
The Art of Making Hard Work Look Easy, or Simply Paid in Gratitude by Edward D. Currelley My mother Annie used to get up long before the crack of dawn; first things first, her coffee. The essential part of getting…
For women body image can be fraught with conflict and cognitive dissonance. We are inundated with body images from the advertising and media world that are not representative of the full spectrum of womanhood … that don’t reflect the changes…
Dawn Paul VEINS My mother lies on her back on the big double bed lifts her right leg, straightens it, pumps her foot. See how swollen my ankle gets? Her ankle is smooth, shiny scribbled with thin red veins. She…
Virginia Chase Sutton CONSTELLATIONS On the skin inside my upper arms are galaxies of bruises, some as fresh as this morning, one or two for each day when Mother inspects to see if I’ve lost weight. I haven’t. She…
Kathleen Aguero SELF-PORTRAIT AS A GERANIUM Here’s all I’ve got: one showy cluster of red blossoms, fancy hat on a scrawny neck rising above bare stems and gently ruffled leaves with their dark inner border, peach fuzz. Leggy, untrimmed, I’m…
Michelle Reale THIS YEAR MY SORROW DROWNS ITSELF This year my sorrow drowns itself. I can’t be responsible anymore. Here is where I’m at: you’ve nailed my hair to the floorboards, and I lay quiet, all shallow breathing like…
Jill McDonough CAREFUL Josey kisses me Christmas morning in the kitchen and it’s so good we end up having sex on the floor. But we are old ladies now, laugh together while we stagger slowly to the ground, first one…