Jane Yolen Grandlings Between us, we have eight, all of whom but one, have a fall of decisions before them. Only one is out of school. How ancient our own concerns of education now seem, new shoes, a date…
Serena Agusto-Cox Remote Work Home office view of the quiet yard. The birds bang their heads into glass, a moment of blindness. Mating songs, angry tweets, territorial posturing on feeders. Perhaps, my office is not soundless. Elementary school streaming,…
Rebecca Brock Good Housekeeping (America, during Covid, during Trump) She keeps trying to get her house in order pretending with the rest of them that the sun won’t melt the earth, that the seas won’t burn, that the land won’t…
Chelsea Reiter Pregnancy Loss in a Pandemic Is Just Like You’d Imagine In a pandemic, you’re privileged to move from a place where the numbers are high to a place where the numbers are low. In a pandemic, you’re…
Alexandra Umlas Sheltering with Daughters Sometimes a shelter is a house. Sometimes a house is a home. Sometimes a home is a prison. I tell myself that you are not missing out, that I can be friend, teacher, mother,…
Pooja Ugrani Thud! A familiar sound drops like a boulder in my belly a second before I open the door. The skull that hit the floor, now bobs up to greet me, to my relief. Guilt boils over. I let…
Meghan Trask Smith First Fever The fosterling burning in this bed calls out for her mother in a fever dream, a woman who is not me. Her mother is handing her unicorn earrings when I wake her for Advil.…
Eloísa Pérez-Lozano Lucky I stroke the wisps of hair on your head and caress your soft and spoiled skin as you suckle mi seno in our bed to the soundtrack of crickets outside. I think about how safe you…
Jennifer L. Freed “Have You Locked up the Knives?” In answer to Ms. K, Department of Children and Family Services Staples, thumb tacks, twist ties, tooth picks. The tips of unfolded paperclips. The spirals of wire binding her college-ruled…
Nicole Hospital-Medina the PAPER poem I found the paper on the kitchen counter under the peacock blue Parenting magazine. ~ I would enter a forest of animals, a zebra, el loro, the ugly ducklings. I would decorate a river…
Margo Berdeshevsky God Bless The Child That’s Got His Own (for labor days poised to shatter) My friends are losing mothers and fathers My world is losing air Today my father died, he says to me My…
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…