A folio curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Motherhood poems have a certain reputation of being overly sentimental and happy. Traditionally, they have not reflected the fact that the motherhood experience is highly complex, involving identity, body image,…
Browsing: Poetry
Maggie Smith Overheard Nothing is yours. All of this, everything, is ours. When my daughter, age seven, says this to her little brother, I stop sliding the white plates into the kitchen cabinet and peek into the playroom. So much…
Kelli Russell Agodon Post-Partum Depression in Volvo For weeks, depression wrote her letters. Now darkness is so close, she feels its tongue in her mouth. In the slow motion of impact, car hitting tree, she imagines Plath, how that was…
Karen Skolfield Raven Versus Crow “If a raven got in a fight with a crow, who would win?” my son asks. “Why would a raven fight a crow?” I ask. “It’s a strawberry,” my son says. “They’re fighting over…
Stephanie Bryant Anderson My Sons (on dead fathers, the Celestial mother & other mothers) I. Child #1: diagnosis, extreme intelligence / anxiety / OCD My son 4, said the trees are closer than the moon. And the…
Erika Meitner Interval “I know backwards the grief of life like chance” – Bernadette Mayer o the music, we have to hurry and drive and sit and call and wait and once, we were silent we stood in a darkened…
Sarah Browning In Mind, Two Months “The most spectacular thing in the world is in my mind. That’s where everything is happening.”– Toni Morrison The runny sound of baby poop. The pull on my nipple, the yank. Washing my…
Teri Cross Davis Two Glasses of Milk If I were to leave them two glasses of milk, don’t write about that, write about the napkin- the perfect triangle tucked around the circle of glass, the absorbed condensation. If I…
JP Howard Night stand Mama buried herself in liquor Love kept her locked in that room Secrets are like insides of coffins We hide everything in plain view Everybody knew Mama had a secret lover, Tucked under her night…
Human Trafficking in the United States Am I their mother? They took them from me My captors Tore them from my arms as they emerged from my womb My babies One after the other I cried after every missed period…