Wendy Brown-Báez Weathering The Storm In the 1980s, I was part of a group that lived off-grid in the countryside of eastern Oregon. We shared a dilapidated barn, a cabin and a main building on five acres at…
Erin McGuff-Pennington She Knew Nowadays all it takes is Call the Midwife, one glass of wine, and I’m an overflowing tub of emotions, soupy water sloshing over the sides. I doubt there’s an end to it—other than the very end—but…
Aimee Pozorski It’s Nothing You Did A woman is most vulnerable flat on her back, knees to her chest, panties dropped to the floor. Darkness surrounds her as the room’s shadows whisper. A wand scans the woman suspicious…
Elaine Terranova Tantrum Things are very hard in the world of a three-year-old. So much you are born not understanding. You can play in the street but only until supper. You get a spanking for the interesting white…
Bruce Moody The Embrace Its wings, its ribs, shoulders, its skin have a mind that desires — as the fires of spring desire — to be held, close, firm, firmly by hands. Hold me, hold me the…
Vivian Montgomery Her Study, Her Story My mother kept the door to her study open at all times. This is how we knew her work was meant to be interrupted, a sideline to us, a thing she did when there…
Golda Solomon She Did the Best She Could Friday nights at dusk she lit the Sabbath candles. Her ritual: hold a lit wooden match to the bottom of each tapered candle, melting the wax so the candle stood on its own in the silver…
Tsaurah Litzky The Sweet Potato Plant When I was little my mother and I lived with my father’s parents in their house in Brownsville, Brooklyn. My mother told me my father was away in France fighting in a big war…
Keshni Naicker Washington Blue To whatever two-legged and four-legged souls that walked by, I must have been a spectacle. A grown woman lying face down on the beach. Hadn’t even made it to the waves. My zigzag trail of…
Susan McGee Bailey Rainbow Time Months into Covid-19, time has lost all precision. Days and weeks have a pleasant, blurry quality similar to my daughter’s rainbows. The ones done in water color, no clear lines of demarcation, one color…
Lisa Romano Licht In the Midst of Fear, My Daughter’s Choice Taught Me to Step Aside Yesterday, as my daughter pulled into the driveway after work, I anxiously opened the garage door. Leaving her jacket, bag and shoes…
M.M. DeVoe Lemon Chicken Rice Soup for the Soul I never expected the pandemic to result in good things for our family, but it did. My daughter was thirteen when the pandemic hit, a young thirteen, still mourning the…