“We bring you here to see dead things—” A folio of the supernatural in motherhood * As we enter autumn, the veil between the living and the dead things becomes gauzier; time seems to take on a different meaning. As Tzynya Pinchback says in “Menarche,” “everything now is before and after, everything now is before and after. Something wild in us all.” The poems in MER’s September folio center the supernatural in motherhood. In “Orchard Revisited,” a poem rich with the smell of ripe apples, Diannely Antigua writes of her miscarried nephew, “my sister and her husband waited //…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Diannely Antigua ORCHARD REVISITED for Andrés In the beginning, there was no word. So I called him baby apple, conceived in September. I fell in love with the seed, as if it were my own, so happy I would be—the single, queer aunt, always late for the parties. At the root, to miscarry could mean there was a wrong way to cradle what only the insides could touch. At home, I boiled the water, lit the rose-scented candle. In the hospital, my sister and her husband waited to meet their dead son. At the root, to miss could mean…
Erin Armstrong THE WEIGHT OF BODIES My grandmother cared and carried the weight of bodies. Her ghost stands in the street to speak of bodies. Her ghost stands in the street to speak to bodies. I dug a hole to plant her a cherry tree. I dug a hole to plant her a cherry tree and held the weight of her silent emotion. I held the weight of her silent emotion. I’m tired of asking photographs to speak. I’m tired because photographs won’t speak. She raised her three boys so they would talk. She raised her three boys so…
Sara Ries Dziekonski INVISIBLE My son has swallowed the potion that makes him invisible I scan the room say Where’s Teddy? Where’s my gooooobs? When he’s ready to bring himself back he giggles shouts Boo— my mother is invisible I know she is here by her visits like yesterday on my walk to pick up Teddy a ladybug landed on my favorite bright blue leggings my mother’s way of saying Oh Sara those look nice on you look at your legs can we trade like she said so many times with a smile that opened windows At the school …
Lindsay Kellar-Madison MILK & MARROW Moon-milk pooled from my body then— wet cushions and capillaries wicked. You refused sleep upstairs, so we stayed— tucked under the yolk- yellow streetlights. A proto-planet of beginnings, we were banished blankets sleeping and soft bodies left to our unspooling. — You wish me dead every day now. Though I doubt you know the grave your rage digs under my ribs. What is this vacuum beneath us? Starlings skate a frozen lake. Moles burrow blind in the yard. Everyone knows hunger is kept in cold ovens. How much it takes to make bones and…
Barbara O’Dair MONSTER Today I bought a shower chair. I’m not old, just dizzy. Recently, I had to sit down on the tile floor to wash my hair, insult upon injury—when I moved here, I pulled out the grip bar in the bathtub wall because it was ancient and unneeded. A couple lived in this house for 50 years, and when their son put it on the market, they were placed in separate facilities: the realtor told us that the wife had dementia whereas the husband was just old. One day, when my infant was asleep, the woman showed up, thin and…
Tzynya Pinchback MENARCHE The summer I turned thirteen. The summer before eighth grade. The summer I learned to climb a tree, launch from the neighbor’s not-up-to-code brick privacy fence, and tuck my body into itself, drop cannonball style into our swimming pool. The summer I limped home – salve of gravel and mud pressing closed the crevasse sliced into the back of my upper right thigh – after jumping a chain link fence racing my brother to the library. The summer I was bridesmaid in Uncle Michael’s wedding, when we lost the house and moved from Los Angeles to…
Amanda Quaid FARRUCA Just once, she thought the baby’s face looked like her mother’s— only in the blue light, only at a glance, a ghost rippling up the cheeks, the crinkled nose, something in the way she scowled at a songbird that surprised her: resurrection, genes like bulls charging forth from past to present tense. Amanda Quaid’s work was awarded the 2023 Bridport Prize. Her debut collection, No Obvious Distress, a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, is out now with John Murray Press. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter, and she…
Joani Reese FEVER DREAM In the dark, the collector, cape and hood painted black, knocks three times at my sick mother’s door. He salutes the vast heavens, leans his scythe towards the wall, then saunters to her bedside to finesse her withdrawal from the world. His skeletal hands stroke her whisper-fine hair; he waits for the nurse to be busy elsewhere, then he shuffles her memories and settles himself down to read her as though she’s a book to be shelved. He stares from her eyes that have grayed from the green, takes her life for a test drive, wants to see what she’s seen. She dozes,…
Nancy Ring HOW BRIGHTLY Hot pink feather, glued by a child. It’s a bird I think, and that feather looks warm. Would that I could pluck it and wear it like a moustache, but it won’t salve these icy arms. Dragging my mother with me, my mother who is always, always cold. We pull our sweater sleeves down over our veined hands, our jackets pulled tight around us, she slow bending over her walker, one small step at a time. But today there is urgency. I magically make her race in hot pursuit. We pass more pink, the hot…