Care A MER VOX Folio of Poetry and Prose “Care” is a word with many shades of meaning. Although not strictly a contronym, it is a “Janus word” of a sort, in that it gazes out in opposing directions. Care encompasses both nurture and travail, the bestowal of affection and the consequences of its withholding; there is care we take or give and are or aren’t given. There are cares we endure, survive. Deep in the heart of winter, as we celebrate romantic love, it seems appropriate also to explore areas of the heart made tender by…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Rebecca Brock Chocolate Heart, Valentine’s Day 2018 Unfurling small fingers, loosened with sleep, I find a fistful of melted chocolate—a heart: heated, sweet. I am careful. I warm the water, fold the cloth, and try to clean the cup of your palm without waking you— I know what it is to love some small thing too much, the way the neighbor boy caught fireflies and moths, the way, when I was your age, I accidentally clasped that butterfly and realized, it wouldn’t fly again. When your brother was your age he came home safe— but it changed the way…
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 the edge of a pine forest. A road curved close enough for passing cars to be seen through the trees, but it felt secluded and safe. A stream ran across the property where one of us caught a fish in his hands. The buildings were heated by wood stoves and cutting and stacking wood was a chore all took turns…
Lorraine Currelley A Woman’s Legacy ancient women dream of love, passion, tender touch and thirsty kiss. we’ve known murdered rainbows and aching bed. there is no escaping naked heart and mourning. this legacy we carry as women. we know the storms that come threatening and invading our peace. i was a woman long before becoming a wife and mother. your dreams are not unlike my own, nor are they newly spun. we are the gray crowned women you will become. buried in each wrinkle are centuries of life lived. cuddle at our bosoms, sit at our feet and listen.…
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 it’s clear Week 13 was the start. “Your baby’s the size of a lemon!” the app cheered on Sunday. On Monday, an ultrasound. The doctor was grim. “Abnormal,” she frowned, slipping into the room. She pumped Purell, squinted at the screen. “But sixty percent chance the fetus survives and it’s nothing.” She might as well have dangled me off a…
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 of doctors since decades ago a resident got stoned and joked about breasts. Today’s doctor is young, completing her residency in Atlanta, disgruntled at this Emory hospital, mumbling something about politics, the patient pool, the South. The lights go up and the darkness comes, flooding the room with the question: “Has everything else been normal?” Else. The doctor speaks of…
Skip Renker A Widow Honeymooning near the rim of a volcano, who wouldn’t catch fire? She laughed when he re-phrased St. Augustine: “Better to marry and to burn.” She stopped smoking. He didn’t. In restaurants, diners at other tables began to do all the talking. Their sweetest child grew into a smoldering adult. They moved a thousand miles from the ocean. She dreamed of rigging, the crow’s nest, a cavernous hold. A retirement cruise, deck chairs, brilliant stars— they rubbed and warmed each others’ hands. Dying, remembering the one necklace he ever gave her, he whispered “Beads…beads…” She dreams…
Christine Stewart-Nuñez Excess Rex My preschooler fears fire, typhoons, and lightning storms. He doesn’t chatter about the Prairie School gas station we scrutinized on vacation; he asks about the wildfire described on the plaque across the street. The burn and evacuation happened years ago, I said, but he still woke from nightmares where sparks landed on his back. He selects books: What Makes a Volcano? and The Ice Age. One snowflake means blizzard. I heard the radio say an ice storm’s on the way, he’ll whisper. Months before his birth, his dad texted: xavier rex. He liked the visual…
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 balloons the size of sausages you find discarded there and try to blow up. You can’t pee in a bottle like next-door Bobby, so must hurry home or wet yourself. After supper night comes but not always sleep. You are safe while there is light. Then the light gets put out. Now that you are three, no one touches you.…
Ann Fisher-Wirth Lebkuchen There is more and more I tell no one Jane Hirshfield Once a week, my mother brought me home to make Lebkuchen, my passion all that fall because it would ripen while I was gone and because it saved talking. I spent hours measuring and mixing +++and shaping ++++++and baking the bars stiff with dried fruit and honey, and she let me pretend— but pretend what? that I was helping prepare for Christmas? She would drive over to the Home and pick me up, then, as we neared the house, I would lie down on…