Ashley Espinoza 27 Miles “Should I have nursed her inside the room?” I asked my mom. As a single mother I needed her to drive me to the clinic, 27 miles from my home. “I don’t know, maybe?” My…
Browsing: MER VOX
Jennifer Furner The Adventurers The locker room was boisterous with women’s voices and running water, and I navigated my way through naked bodies to the showers with my baby in my arms. A woman, fully dressed, sat behind glass…
Mike Gray The Stoic Birds are starting outside already, somewhere in the languid cool. My arms stretch overhead, body sleeved in fatigue, tired skin luxuriating beneath the sheets. A good day to silence the alarm. Burrow and nestle. Be…
Francesca Leader Milk and Blood My first child was six months old when I started working. I bought ten kinds of bottles, and she hated every one; she starved herself all day until I got home, then latched on…
Ellen June Wright Washing Day c. 1950 Hands finger a bright-white diaper, damp— then reach for a peg. She strains upward to grab the line; one more to clip and clip again as others flutter in the breeze, a…
Brian Clements A poem about mothers might contain a list of battles, homes, and film worlds where mothers appear, might comprise all instances of mothers of pearl, of invention, of babies and all wars, might list their unacknowledged legislation…
Margo Griffin How to Signal a Ceasefire During War I slipped my feet into the warm, pink, fuzzy slippers my daughter Maura bought me three Christmases ago, before our war began and back when she liked me. The gift…
Melanie Faranello Becoming Early Days I stick your tiny fist inside my mouth and cry. It’s the size of a plum. We have no regard for time, or the falling from day into night into day. Together, we defy the…
Annie Marhefka You can’t belong to the sky Her lips pressed against each other in a glistening pout when she said it, the melted ChapStick spilling over the top of its plastic cylinder in her chubby-fingered grip. The lid…
Alexandria Faulkenbury In My Toddler’s Room In my toddler’s room, the internet stalls and sputters and gives up halfway through loading a page on my phone. I drop it into my lap in frustration. The darkness envelopes its illuminated…