What the River Knows Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello People tell me I am good with babies. Children like me, they say, this little so-and-so doesn’t smile for just anybody, that little such-and-such who never talks to strangers must be pried…
Browsing: MER VOX
Assumption Emma Bolden The snow stopped before I was born, but I was a girl before the rain started. That was when I had a different body, all baby fat and fast flashes of motion that stilled into sleep.…
Grand Diva, Interrupted by Anna Limontas-Salisbury When my daughter announced I was going to become a grandmother, I was still processing motherhood. I was only coming to understand that the role shifts, but does not end. My daughter was…
Single Parenting Through the Pandemic by Danielle Stelluto I would have never predicted that my 33rd birthday on March 11th of 2020 would have been the last time we would be stepping outside of our home without needing protective…
Jennifer Franklin APRIL 2020, NYC The winds shake the windows. It has rained for six days as if the gods are punishing us for hubris and hatred. Without school to tire her, my daughter cannot sleep through the night…
Nicole Callihan From Yesteryear (3/26) And even if I were. And even if I were. If there are 24 hours in a day and 6 people in a house, 12 hands to be washed, and also bodies, 2 of…
Patricia Starek Simple Request The request was simple Can my child come say hello to your child? With appropriate social distance of course It has been 8 weeks since this 7-year-old has seen a friend in the flesh…
Karen George Frida Kahlo’s My Nurse and I, 1937 I. Infant with an adult head, held loosely, near falling from a wet nurse’s arms—face covered by a dark mask, a grimace. Lush foliage reaches her shoulders. Sky of…
Jen Karetnick Advised to Keep a Journal During Lockdown, I Pretend I Am in Pompeii and hold a glass to the wall of the world hissing with a language invented each day anew What sibilance seeps into my…
Tina Kelley Wolf Tree Alone in a field, it grew in every direction, asterisk of wood. If it were fireworks: chrysanthemum, crosette, palm, peony. If emotion: surprise, joy, optimism. If vocabulary: fractal, excrescent. A philosophy: If growth stops in one direction, try…