Author: Mom Egg Review
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor The Grand Days of Noho Star for Kathy Engel Dear Kathy I miss our poetry brunches at Noho Star our talks on MFA programs children spouses mothers finances manuscripts submission guidelines— I miss our San Pellegrino flat radish onion and avocado salad at Noho Star we enjoyed fried onions in a spicy mango chutney it was there that I tried Blue Moon beer for the first time with two orange slices she gave me not one but two orange slices and who ever heard of Mexican pizza with raw eggs on top or fried shrimp with garlic eggplant…
Review by Julia Lisella Dorian Elizabeth Knapp asks the questions everyone is thinking—what is poetry in the age of AI? What is poetry in the face of a dying planet? What is poetry at the cusp of a democracy in grave danger? Causa Sui, Knapp’s third full-length collection and winner of the Three Mile Harbor Press Poetry Prize, is equal parts funny and deadly serious, and the stakes are always high. Underlying many of the poems in this collection is the deep anxiety over what Knapp refers to in her poem “Negative Capability” as “the great drag show of…
Caitlin Grace McDonnell BAD MOMS I always cry on airplanes. Thought it was the movies. But when I cried at Bad Moms, I wondered if it was the booze. Tiny bottle of Titos and Mr.& Mrs. T. Or maybe it was being up above my life, so that I could see its topographies, the patterns like farm circles, slopes and narrative arcs. Or was it the turning over of my fate to a stranger I couldn’t see, closed behind a locked metal door, whose voice may well be a lie. I didn’t mind until I became a mom. My…
MER Bookshelf – January 2026 Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Forthcoming books with flair! Susan L. Leary, More Flowers, Trio House Press, February 2026, poetry With lyrical acuity, philosophical insight, and deep reverence for girlhood, womanhood, and the wildly intelligent spirit that is the female imagination, Susan L. Leary’s newest collection, More Flowers, unfolds as self-interrogation, tribute, and template for survival. At its center is the figure of the mother, whose fierce brutality in navigating the world offers the speaker ambition, tender affirmation, and a necessary understanding of her origins. In particular, images of nature abound: at each turn,…
Mothers and Family This year, MER is examining the ins and outs of mothers with families, both online and in our forthcoming print issues. Often mothers are the nuclei of families—of the legacies, obligations, and stories that orbit around us. Family of heritage, family of birth, family of choice, our greater human family: our families can be sources of support, of exhaustion, of love, of pain. Our families can pass down to us lore or trauma. We are exploring creative writing that addresses our role as mother in these unwieldy units, how we embroider with and untangle these familial…
Jessica Yen Houdini When your second child has been thrashing for twenty-one minutes in their bassinet, you finally recognize, with a clarity you could not have possessed with your eldest, that your infant is so achingly overtired they are physically unable to drift into slumber. Two newborn phases and three pregnancies have acquainted you with the peculiar combination you now recognize in your flailing baby: the muscles that throb with exhaustion even as the mind skips and glides, churns and crashes. As you watch them drift into deep slow breathing, only to flop onto their back and scream in…
Jen Bryant Lessons My son hunches over a math worksheet, brow furrowed in concentration. He solves an addition problem quickly, then reconsiders, doubling back. I watch as he erases carefully, then pencils a new answer over the gray smudge left behind. Pink eraser shavings dot the back of his small hand. For the past few weeks, we’ve been doing our homework together on the back porch, taking advantage of a string of warm fall afternoons. I’m supposed to be working on my own paper, due tomorrow. Instead, I peer across the patio table at my son, waiting to see…
Tracie Adams All My Love, Monitored and Recorded There never seemed to be a good time to see the jail’s number on our caller ID. The phone ringing didn’t surprise us, but it sure pissed us off. Our oldest son, adopted at age eleven, would call from jail, usually while we were eating dinner or having a family game night with our other three kids. “You have a collect call from an inmate in Pamunkey Regional Jail. This call is being monitored and recorded for security purposes. Please refrain from discussing the inmate’s case, as any and all communication…
Nettie Reynolds Crossing the Canyon In June 2011, a month after my divorce was finalized, I packed up the car in Austin, Texas, and took the first of what would become many trips with my two kids—my nine-year-old son, my eleven-year-old daughter—and our pug. We had always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and that summer I decided: we would go. Just the three of us, finding a new path. The Grand Canyon is still forming. The Colorado River didn’t carve it in one dramatic gesture—it shaped it slowly, over millions of years, with flood and drought, ice and…