Chrissy Martin SUMMER ARTHRITIS LESSONS My mother slips a careful sock onto my feet, and even though I am 27 and perfectly capable of dressing myself, I let her. They are excessively thick and knit for July heat,…
Chloe Martinez SEASCAPE “Juego de manos (Hand Play), Juchitán, Oaxaca” [Graciela Iturbide, photograph, 1988; Philadelphia Museum of Art] …
Tzynya Pinchback A SONG FOR DESIRE Before the knowledge of pain, man heard the call of sugar. Skin of innocence shed, Eve built an altar to sugar. I plant one thing of beauty in my garden, no nightshades, a…
Heidi Seaborn SEARCHING FOR SIGNS OF LIFE, A ZUIHITSU ~for Audrey Rían Even in the sluggish hours, I listen for signs of life. And when the moon clicks into the night sky, I hear it calling. According to NASA,…
Sheila L. Carter-Jones HOW A BODY Get your wife a little something the rich lady said at a rest-stop along the turnpike, when my father chauffeured her all the way to the nation’s capital. He picked out a porcelain boxer…
E.J. Antonio Matriarch someone sang for me from behind her teeth the sound of blood’s rush called me from myself into myself a body an earth song of love & bitterness someone sang for me deep in Virginia pines…
Lao Rubert Asking Your Permission for Maryam, born Feb 5, 2020 You’ve arrived. Ears, elbows, fingers precisely in place, controlling your world from a tiny perch. The news is blaring as your eyes flicker open bringing greetings from…
Sarah Dickenson Snyder Finding You Imagine that we could pick our mothers that there was a parade of them walking by and we stand behind some gentle barrier to watch and select from the mothers who carry spools…
Kelli Stevens Kane Moon Rocks (Mom, 1969) Oh! (wistfully) The moon rocks. Okay your dad was out of town. And while we were watching them come out of the rocket and jump down to the moon [on TV]…
Margaret D. Stetz “Whistler’s Mother” How strange how wrong a title Arrangement in Grey and Black for what begins in reddest flows of blood and grows like bars of color layered on a rainbow the mother-child relationship encompassing…
Hilde Weisert Belly Is this what you think of when dying? The white tunnel not to Heaven but where you came from, a belly, your source. The hands guiding you, your mother’s hands, fussing to get you ready…
Lisa Briana Williams The Steamroller Tries to Remain Light It is too easy to say everything we were told about motherhood is a lie. More true to say I absorbed nothing but goodness until it came for me—that…