Alise Alousi I Am Not Your Mother after reading “Whose Mother is Nature Anyway?” Annabel Kennan, Hyperallergic November 2022 I am not your mother. I can’t carry you along the eroding beach nor across the dirtied river. I am…
Browsing: Poetry
Elisabeth Weiss Detention Camp Children skateboard into the sweetness of what cannot last. Rachmanes derives from the word for womb. That little violet face shut in a cage. Palms grow hard in a border town where everyone is afraid.…
Jenn Givhan Apples Fall We ride into the orchard at the edge of town my children on hay bales beside me, bumping along. What does it mean to fall, my daughter has asked me for a poem she must…
Ingrid Andersson Nova Stella I knew from the out-of-the-blue lull that can befall hard labor, bestowing sleep, that she was fully dilated: I pronounced her complete. The woman roused, turned dilated eyes to me and said—with blinding depth…
Danielle Jones A Love Poem Without Subtext Because sometimes the best way to say a thing is to say it: a river is as wide as a river, a knife as sharp as a knife. My love for you…
Judgment “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” — “Rating” Mothers “Are you a good witch or a bad witch,” Dorothy asks Glinda, who has no problem naming herself as good. When we apply the…
Maram Al-Masri Poetry from The Abduction (forthcoming from White Pine Press in Spring 2023) Translated by Hélène Cardona The Abduction refers to an autobiographical event in Maram Al-Masri’s life. When, as a young Arab woman living in France, she decides…
Elīna Eihmane Night Mommy When darkness falls Night Mommy crawls into your bed with scissors. She cuts your nails and treats your wounds with sea buckthorn oil, she rubs White Flower ointment on your nose so you can breathe…
Dzvinia Orlowsky Our Dolls Were Naked Our dolls were naked, but our cats stayed partly clothed—a ribbon here, a brown felt hat there, two holes cut and fitted for their ears. My sister and I wanted them pretty for…
Maria Mazziotti Gillan Snow Falls Thick outside the windows of Saint Marguerite retreat house. If only my mother had not died more than 20 years ago, I’d call her, tell her, my practical, no-nonsense mother, to stop working…