Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz Weaning Today I said goodbye to you while “papa” held you atop the front porch, me below, blowing kisses and waiting for you to mimic my movements of palmed stretched hands from lips to air in your…
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Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie Writing Around the Edges “I learned to write around the edges.” Wanda Coleman I wake up every day at 4AM while the house is quiet. I write for three hours until the children wake up.…
J. Nicole Hill Thanks to him There are those sleepless nights The long sometimes ten hour days Always racing against time Until we meet soon again Picking my baby boy up from the babysitter Exhausted but somehow energized hearing…
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…
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…