MER has opened submissions for its 25th annual issue, MER 27. Submissions of poetry, fiction, creative prose, and art will be accepted from May 1 to July 15th. All submissions are taken through Submittable. Please view our Guidelines and Submission info.
Author: Mom Egg Review
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Chelsea Krieg, Everything Is Water, Texas Review Press, March 2026, poetry Everything Is Water is an open letter to caregivers as the speaker grapples with her partner’s life-threatening illness, pregnancy and new motherhood, and marriage. Growing up on the Virginia coast, the speaker knows the water’s danger and allure—asks, what is beneath, what has control in so much open and unknown space? The speaker continues to feel this unease in everything as she navigates fear, identity, and loss. Everything is water. Everything is the surface tension created by the unknown. The collection often returns…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Accidental Devotions is a wonder of a poetry collection, organized in four sections: Scrolling for God, Rebel Angels, Cathedral of Clouds, and Unmistakable Prayers. The final poem is called Necessary Prayer, and it is a standalone that the poet identifies as a “devotion”. She would like the reader to take that poem with them or pass on to someone who needs it. Having reviewed her previous poetry collection with Copper Canyon, Dialogues with Rising Tides, I can say this seems in character for this poet. Kelli’s ability to dwell in a world where words…
Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason Most adults who grew up in the United States remember reading Highlights. Before the digital age, children around the country would peruse Highlights while waiting for a doctor or dentist appointment. The magazine is accessible to children of all ages, from the wordless hidden pictures to more complex short stories. Today the magazine’s foundation runs the Boyds Mills writing residencies for children’s storytellers in rural Pennsylvania. The founding of Highlights is truly an American success story, yet there’s an underlying sadness in the magazine’s history. Marty Ross-Dolen is the great-granddaughter of the founders, Caroline and…
Review by Emily Webber Susan Finch’s collection of loosely interconnected short stories, Dear Second Husband, is set entirely in Nashville. However, what stands out most are the characters—with relationships strained by grief, violence, dissatisfaction, and changing lives. Finch’s keen eye for everyday moments pulsing with emotional depth makes this collection deeply engaging. Whether a character faces a miscarriage, a family dynamic departs from expectations, or a marriage unfolds differently than imagined, the reader sees their relationships with each other shift, fracture, or strengthen. The collection opens in full force with a woman trying to escape her violent ex-husband in…
Heather Haldeman Pick up the Phone! “There you are!” Mom would say, taking a slurp of her instant coffee. It would be 8:00 am, the usual time for her morning call. I’d picture her in bed, the long powder blue coiled cord of her telephone attached to the powder blue dial phone by her side, The Los Angeles Times on the floor next to the bed cast aside like one of her tabloids. Once she’d read her horoscope and the TV line-up, she was done with the newspaper. It didn’t matter that I was getting my children ready for…
Tina Cane GOOD MOM For years I drove back and forth through traffic with a carload of children short distances like sprints during which I would curse from behind the wheel for the sheer amount of hours and my propensity towards profanity made it inevitable once my children were old enough to speak they began asking me what these words I muttered under my breath meant it was then that I resolved to choose new swears that didn’t sound so harsh as to prompt a response it was thus that I chose Jesus Christ a name which rolled off…
Reflections on At the Gate: Uncollected Poems 1987-2010 by Lucille Clifton by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie Lucille Clifton always reminds me of things I need to remember. I’ve written often about how when I was a new mother a photo of Clifton reminded me to discard any remnants of the nonsense I might have internalized about choosing art or motherhood. I still remember, clear as a sunny summer day in Jamaica, Queens, seeing a black and white photo of Clifton surrounded by her six children. I tucked the photo away like a talisman that would guide me—then a mother of…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Sometimes an Island is a short but mighty novel-in-stories that opens with a prologue and brief history of pogroms against Jews in the Russian empire in the early 1900s. The escape of three young men and a girl who settle on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine frames the story. These early refugees will impact future generations who become climate refugees after global warming leads to an extreme weather event called The Undoing in 2029. Part cli-sci, part literary fiction, part parable, these connected stories warn as they weave the reader and in and…