Mothering Along – MER Online Poetry Folio Curated by Cindy Veach and Jennifer Martelli In her poem, “Memo to the Absent,” Wendy Scher presents the Sabbath table set for two: the mother and the daughter. She writes, “We miss…
Julia C. Alter The Nursing Chair It’s an off-white chair, a chair that sits four feet from a TV in a house that’s somehow only five minutes from me. It’s empty, holding only the grimy imprint of a heavy…
Ana María Carbonell Ledger & Vermouth –They say after everything is gone cockroaches remain. The clicking of ice cubes in the back office told them she was home (maybe she’d been there for hours). She’d pour a vermouth…
Savannah Cooper-Ramsey By Four Months My body anticipates your illness by overproducing milk. I wake wet with it. You cry so much, and neither of us truly sleeps. “Why?” I say, “Why?” as I remember not to shake you…
Jill Crammond When I Sell My Wedding Ring at the Pawn Shop —After Morgan Parker I grow wings with the following conditions. Divorced is defined as not married, my children renamed fledglings. Single mother is understood to be metaphor…
Kelsey Jordan I Find a Blond Hair in His Laundry I ignore the baby and yet, cannot take my eyes off her red and wrinkled fists of a freshly burned phoenix. I walk around her nursery, a bird…
Laurin Becker Macios Mama, Look Laurin Becker Macios’ books include the forthcoming YA verse novel Calling Me Home (Holiday House, 2026) and the poetry collection Somewhere to Go, winner of the…
Kali Pezzi I Treat My Postpartum Depression With Friends On Facetime Self-diagnosed. I’m in the midst of an existential crisis. I text crisis text line and they ask me if I have weekend plans. I don’t. I can’t plan…
Sara Quinn Rivara Single Motherhood Is My Superpower I wish I could shoot light out of my hands. Light would fill me as water fills a glass. I wouldn’t let men near. Summer evenings, I’d walk unafraid through dark…
Adrie Rose Climate Strike I organize the strike and I burn dinner. I organize the strike and I carry our clothes two blocks to the laundromat. The news says it’s already too late and I organize the strike. I…
Wendy Mannis Scher Memo to the Absent Facing west, feel the weight of late afternoon press itself against the windows. Such heat, and the refracted sun quilts the floor, the walls, the skin, dust motes threading rainbows. Beyond the…
Jennifer Barber Writing Too Fast, I Write “Thew” for “The” As if you and I commingled +++++++++in the dark and later the same day I give birth to little baby Thew, +++++++++born in winter under a mauve sky. By…