Review by Michelle Panik My bank had written and called—multiple times—with news that they were phasing out safe deposit boxes, and I would need to remove my things. While I clearly remembered some of the box’s contents, which my memory was hazy about others. But they all had to be important; if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have locked them in a bank vault 15 miles from my home. I was halfway through Kim Danielson’s Piece by Piece: A Life of Remembered through Things Lost when I finally went to collect my things. As I drove the final few miles…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Reviewed by Susan Blumberg-Kason The written Chinese character for “mouth” is a square. It’s also included in more complex characters for words like “eat”, “drink”, “breathe”, and “cry”, all words central to the necessities of life. In her recent book of poetry, An Orange, A Syllable, Gillian Sze writes about motherhood and marriage through the imagery of characters like “mouth”, as well as descriptions from pieces of art and literature. Most of Sze’s poems are short pieces of prose, although she also includes a handful of poems that follow a different format: the light insofar the light as…
Edited by Melissa Joplin Higley New and forthcoming books (listed by publication date). Elizabeth O’Rourke, Rewoven in the Dew, Kelsay Books, June 2026, poetry Rewoven in the Dew explores shades of what life asks of us when we are committed to noticing. Through experiences of young & committed love, the prairie of new motherhood, the heartbreak of medical missteps, and even encounters with women of the Bible, this collection weaves patience and trust for what inevitably comes next. Aimee Suzara, Birth Language, Tia Chucha Press, August 2026, poetry Aimee Suzara’s second full-length book Birth Language centers on…
Poetry Folio Edited by Carla Panciera and Cindy Veach Amid the hothouse needs and cares blooming around me, how often I disappear.—Sarah Sadie The poems in this folio explore one of motherhood’s dualities: the mother the world sees and the woman inside who possesses a sense of self that existed before her children were born and who persists despite them. Outwardly, she may be giving herself away by prioritizing her family; inwardly, she may be quietly taking inventory of what remains hers and thinking, as Anna Crandall writes, “I am homesick for myself.” The voices in these poems…
A.E. Abitz Mom, Tell Me of your shelved forfeits, things caged away or lost. Tell me how time was never right— how you wished to see the world, but daddy made your choices. Tell me you wanted kids, guessed nurture called so resolved to nurse. Tell me how harsh nights and heavy shifts, scooping patients pricking sons colored twenty years, and you forgot to want. Until rooms finally emptied, and you shook loose memory of free spirit, wild ocean winds …
Meredith Boe In Rooms When you were still on the other side, in the fidelity of non-mothering, before you conversed with women from hundreds of years ago, before the men acted like you died, new mothers were always disappearing into rooms. You’d all take turns holding the baby, reading her a book, and giving her a bottle. But mother and child would eventually withdraw, and you never knew what went on in those rooms, places you weren’t allowed or were too afraid to enter. What happens in rooms becomes a pattern like anything else. Sharp corners, dust mites under…
Anna Crandall “In the past 7 days have you had difficulty sleeping even when you had the opportunity to sleep?” Some nights the only sound the breath between wails. Moon a curved fingernail the nurse said to chew off after birth— one more thing I couldn’t decipher in the inky unholy sameness of each evening; the only passage from waxing to gibbous and back in the fugue state of the black was animal things: milk coming with tears, leaking beginning each fraught dream. Some babies sleep with mouths open: gasping fish pigs rooting the soil of flesh any number…
Becca Rose Hall Horizontal Mother mother of the darkened room mother of daytime sleeping voice high with pain mother as child child as mother of the vague love the sweet sweet nothings heavy-armed mother mother of ellipses mother of my daughter mother of my mother mother of me oh mother of god have I become this mother mother of the half-thought mother of the blank stare pale mother soft mother daytime pajama mother sick mother ill mother addict mother attic mother fog mother dream mother mother-upon-mother mother child in the doorway makes a shadow in the sudden light the…
Nicole Herbert Some Days Some days I can be the mother I want to be. Some days I can listen to an entire twenty-minute story about the video game level that was finally beat and ask the right questions. Some days I can give one more hug, tell one more story, get the glass of water, check under the bed, find the lost teddy, give one more hug, and still smile and enjoy the third one-more-hug as we say goodnight. Some days I remember the right name for the friend from the story told two months before. I remember…
Megan Leonard Things I Am Not Sorry For I am not sorry for the starve That kept me alive like a singed hair It was what I needed to do to live The way the wet leaves make a pattern of slicked Orange and red on the slate-blue sidewalks. I am not sorry for the haunting of my own bell tower The walking back and forth for hours In the rafters, singing to myself And wrapping my fingers around my own wrists Over and over again. It was a comfort I needed to survive The sound the rain makes…