Sleep When the Baby Sleeps and Other Nonsensical Writing Advice by Pichchenda Bao A renowned poet once gently suggested to me that I would never find the perfect conditions to write so I shouldn’t let that hold me back. I think about that advice often. I know there are writers who fill up the backs of receipts, napkins, prescription pads, the notebook app on their phones, who scribble sitting on the sidelines of playing fields, at the playground, on the subway, who wake up early or stay up late to take advantage of the quiet to write things down,…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Jimmy’s Revival –from a work-in-progress by Lyndsey Ellis Sugar called the day after my trial visit with Jimmy at the Revival Complex. As usual, she wore her granny hat for the first half hour, buttering me with small talk, like Eudal’s fickle weather and what she was baking for her neighbors. I didn’t mind since she’d caught me at the laundromat, desperate to pass time while my clothes dried. I used the glass door of my dryer as a mirror to pluck rogue gray hairs from my afro while Sugar caught me up on the lives of…
Rita Kelley Hard Head For twenty years, Rita Kelley has been developing a unique voice drawn from her memories, intuition, and imagination. Her themes center on family, connection, home, and nature, and in recent years, her process has moved into creating a dreamlike quality and figurative abstraction through collage. She has illustrated two poetry chapbooks with Feral Press, designed cover art, and has appeared in the annual Women Artists Datebook (Syracuse Cultural Workers.) She exhibited at the Manchester Connecticut Workspace Out of Many Art Exhibit, celebrating Caribbean Culture (2025) and in 2026 received an honorable mention…
The Far Side of the Moon is Another Form of Absence –after Luisa A. Igloria by Lorraine Rice Mostly I return the cold shoulder with a coiled tongue of distrust. I want to believe without the burden of proof but fear faith is for hairless, mewling animals all a-huddle, warm bodies pressed one to another in a woven bowl of dried grass and plastic strips, certain of return, the mushed up worm. I once tried feeding my baby this way, chewing what she couldn’t, breaking braids of meat to mash, then passing the pulp, nutrients…
In the Beginning by Z.M. Spalter Sleep when the baby sleeps, lay him on his back, no, lay her on her belly, but only if you are in the same room. Read books about sleep, as if you haven’t been sleeping, every single day of your entire life, since the day you were born, all without giving it much thought. Wonder if you should hire a sleep consultant. Sleep with baby beside you, not down the hall, and never, not ever, on the couch, but also not in the same bed as you, unless you decide to, but only…
The Language of Our Mothering -For Kai by Avery Irons Before you were born, a small, but solid enough, part of me feared that blood was the only ingress. And then I held you, and with blue-gray eyes, so unlike my brown-black ones, you peered up at me, and I was exulted— you knew me. _____ Our mothers called across with accents dipped in the souths of so many lands, trickling like grassland streams, and rough as waters not crossed for generations, chitchatting in the language of our mothering. “Gal, don’t let them nurses poke your baby that much.”…
Sailing With Lucille by J.E. Sills ++++++”may the tide ++++++that is entering even now ++++++the lip of our understanding ++++++carry you out ++++++beyond the face of fear” ++++++Blessing the Boats ++++++– Lucille Clifton (1937-2010) This poem you learn has the power of time travel. It arrives later in your life but stirs up those old Philadelphia days when your little life was happening and those storm clouds that threatened. It’s the late-1980s, you’re a j-school graduate student and a clerk for a tabloid newspaper–on the lobster shift. So-called after the old English for a lob, a dolt, a loser.…
Good Girl by Gail Upchurch Sweet messages written on the bottoms of my brown paper bag lunches. Crocheted, granny square blankets. A shared strawberry malt at Woolworth’s. In the eighteen years that I’ve been a mother, I have consciously held tight to as many of my mother’s joyous little dailies and weaved them into my own mothering practice. As much as I appreciate her and celebrate all that she got right, I’ve also fought against the more unsavory parts of her parenting approach–-namely, the emotionally destructive physical discipline she doled out whenever she deemed necessary. The day after Super…
Dwight –from a work in progress by Jacinda Townsend He’d heard his mother tell the story until it was legend. Her years on the North Carolina coast, attending college as an afterthought, an avocation secondary to her true purpose, that of allowing the ocean to wash over her feet and sweep up her calves, to draw her so far towards the continental shelf, the sea hugged her shoulders. She’d pack off from her rented room, motoring to the beach while the sun was still a stage light behind clouds, then catch a city bus home in time to attend…
Fab and the Fates –from a work-in-progress by Sophia Russell Fabienne sensed an opening to broach the subject she was giddy about but also scared of. “This week I just have my classes, mostly,” she said. “And I’m going to meet up with Michelle to celebrate my birthday.” Aaron turned his entire body toward Fab’s. “I,” he stumbled. “Oh, Fab.” He brought a hand to her chin and caressed it softly. “You know how crazy it’s been for me lately. We will celebrate you, too. Your choice, I promise. What do you want to do? Dinner? Weekend in the…