Jessica Barlevi [After the first child, I knew] After the first child, I knew. The prize at the end of the pregnancy is not the child. It is the stay. On the maternity ward. Where it is warm and…
Jennifer Case The Machinery Is In Order But We Are Still Fearful Jennifer Case is the author of The Carework Project: Reckoning with Love, Labor, and the Living World (forthcoming from Trinity University Press), We Are Animals: On…
Amy Dryansky Flowers That Bloom Early & Disappear They Call Ephemeral Witch hazel unfurls its ragged, yolk-yellow stars, ++++++& herons arrive, awkward bodies hunched astride their haphazard nests ++++++empty & silent for now, but soon— & robins return puffed…
Laura Foley A Trace of Smoke If I had a son who was forty-one and willing to listen, I’d call him on his birthday and say: I remember— the scent of wood smoke on a pale September morning, how…
Mary Fontana Delivered —an instant late we look where the gulls have gathered, shrieking, the shredded knot now drawing open, its center red and wet, the just-calved creature anonymous already, one more newborn on the seal-tiled beach: a stone heaved…
MR Sheffield 1-800-PREGNANT WOMAN i. we’re told pregnant women are greeting cards diffuse glow filtered lighting soft amber reality is lacework electrified nerve endings but don’t say that aloud images require careful curation a museum of pregnant ladies …
Sian Maciejowski Where All Seas Are the Same I’m standing at the edge again. From inside me comes salt, a cry, a wingbeat too soft to name. There is no answer, only the return of morning. Two women hover…
Evie Calvillo 3-body problem the [problem]is [predicting]the motions of 3 bodies (such as stars or planets) mutually attracted by gravity given their initial positions and velocities – Montgomery oOo we are 3 bodies in a…
Samantha Strong Murphey thaw the first thing she did was math / the baby will be born with the magnolia blooms / the chicks / the thaw of her last decade / and she liked the idea of…
Susie Meserve Borealis Drought-dry afternoon, just past two, California sun licking at shadows, I paused by the door as the Russians do to rest on the suitcase, account for every last thing— passport, tickets, lipstick, suppositories, Valium, Prednisone— before…
Hannah Faith Notess Viviparity I watched my body fail silently as if from a great distance. Time to admit those months I hadn’t created anything of note, I was just existing like the mammal that I am damp and…
Dayna Patterson Groundhog Day It’s Groundhog Day, again, and so: grandmother’s birthday, Candlemas, 2/2, my youngest child’s original due date. She surprised us by arriving a month early, yellowish, as if her skin had been rubbed all over with dandelions.…