Laura Read Winged Victory When I walked up the stairs in the Louvre towards The Winged Victory, I cried as I told my son the story of when I brought my mom to see her and she wept and told…
Sunayna Pal My Infant’s Nails small but sharp scratch my chest trying to grab on like a fledgling learning to get its grip living this new life I start the trim on the thumbnail cut his skin instead he…
Rachel Neve-Midbar Letter To My Children Sand between our toes and pockets full of sea glass—you sparkle, each of you. The smallest ones fuss, though the moon continues to pull the tide out to where it can’t be reached.…
Marjorie Maddox XXX-XX-XXXX Not here, no, not obediently typed ____________before name, beside height_____________, below weight____________, alongside eye color__________, hair color_____________, marital status_______, number of children___, number of pregnancies___, inside skin and all affiliations, inside_________ me, now___________ blank. No longer…
Amy Lee Seahorses everyone assured you how you will feel better after the water breaks. but no one told you about the third-degree tearing, the brain fogs, the Mummy’s wrist which prevented you from holding your own baby. now,…
Natasha Herring To Bake a Black Boy Natasha Herring is a storyteller and former director at the Peabody Award-winning organization StoryCorps. She was an Artbridge, Kimbilio, and VONA Fellow. Her work has been seen or published at the Present Power…
Elizabeth Hutchinson Arborvitae Christmas is over. All day it rained and now as the sun is setting, the first fat flakes of snow. Your fever is spiking again. All night the fire inside you raged darkened, flared again. You…
Caridad Moro-Gronlier For My 21-Year-Old Son, Who Calls Me on The Day Roe V. Wade is Overturned It’s not the ding of a text that comes in but the trill of his ringtone, Landslide, favorite song I refashioned into…
Rebecca Brock Mixed Tapes Is the question, what holds us? Or is the question, what do we hold? In one sitting, my son plays me REM, The Cocteau Twins, Death Grips, Johnny Cash, MF Doom—he pivots genres, eras with…
Rachel Becker Flirting in 23B Oh there were unsuitable men even before your body became alien & ecstatic with children, a bread basket, doughy homily but now you are thirty something (married, suitably) & you haven’t flown alone since…
Erin Armstrong Learning Language ear’ago, Mummy my coffee mug, half filled goes into little hands too big, she takes the handle, tips it, sloshes coffee into the living room carpet ear’ago, Mummy. She smiles tilting the cup toward my…
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…