Review by Rebecca Jane Count On Me untangles knotted emotions, traumas, and stories that connect grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. On its surface, this realistic novel, set during the 2010s in Canada, tells the story of a single mother, Tia Pysar, who struggles alone to raise her young daughter at the same time her aging parents need, yet also push away, Tia’s assistance. Her daughter wakes to nurse every night, throws tantrums against in the car seat, and proves slower than other kids in learning to dress herself. While Tia attempts to give this daughter a more loving childhood than…
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Brenda Cárdenas WHAT A MOLCAJETE HOLDS Despite my drawers full of knives and spoons, cutting boards, spatulas, ceramic ramekins, when I blend spices, I must place them in her molcajete, press the three-generation pestle against cloves to shatter them, grind cominos y ajo in the same circular motion as the tides that softened stones fused to form its mortar. I fold my right hand over hers and hers and hers, their wrinkles a reminder that the skin is now loosening from my carpal bones, every piece of me pulled toward Earth. Although she stands behind me, and another…
Marjorie Maddox On Writing Seeing Things Of all my books, the newest—Seeing Things (Wildhouse, February 2025)—proved the most difficult to write, but also one of the most important. The reason is because of you, dear reader. To better understand ourselves and others, poetry creates experiences. It helps us discover connections between strangers and uncover insight and understanding where we thought there were none. Through specific images and scenes, it says, this is my grief, joy, or hope. Is it yours as well? The poems in Seeing Things record fear, vulnerability, and joy—both from the perspective of caregivers and from…
A Literary Reflection by Ellen Meeropol “I long for books about crazy people,” begins Lydia Kann’s luminous graphic novel, Germaine’s Daughter. “Maybe crazy people who have survived the Shoah – The War. There cannot be enough said about growing up with a crazy person who survived the Shoah” (1). From the pogroms in Poland to the Resistance in France to a marginal existance back and forth between New York City and Los Angeles, this intensely personal story unspools against the enormity of international turmoil. We see a small-statured woman who survives war, raises her daughter as a single parent…
Review by Melanie McGehee Though In the Needle, A Woman is Susan Michele Coronel’s debut poetry book, ‘debut’ feels misleading. Many of the sixty-three poems here were previously published individually, in a wide variety of literary magazines. It may be more fitting to define the collection as prize-winning, as this 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Prize winner reflects maturity and refined poetic craft. I set out to enjoy them all in this new way, presented as a whole in four distinct groupings. I experienced them as one might experience a new and growing relationship. Reading Coronel’s poems is like taking…
Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason Rebe Huntman has enjoyed a long career in dance, directing Danza Viva Center for World Dance, Art & Music out of Chicago, along with its residency dance company One World Dance Theater. Through her work in dance, she has traveled throughout Latin America, including Cuba. She is also an accomplished poet and essayist, and now she has a new book, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir in Magic & Miracle, a lyrical and beautiful story that explores death thirty years after her mother passes away. Huntman hopes to show that it’s never too late to…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Upcoming, new, and noted books (listed in order of date of publication). Geri Lipschultz, Grace Before the Fall, DarkWinter Press, August 2025, literary fiction (novel) Grace Before the Fall is a reminder that every girl has a little Joan of Arc in her wheelhouse. It is the time of the hostage crisis in Iran, and in New York City, it is long before the fall of the towers, just before AIDS has found itself a name, although young men are mysteriously dying, and Grace Rosinbloom is inheriting their furniture. In Geri Lipschultz’s virtual love…
In Loving Memory of Jennifer Martelli We send love to the family and friends of MER’s Poetry Co-Editor Jennifer Martelli on her passing. We are heartsick at this untimely loss. Jenn was a brilliant, unique poet, an astute editor, a brave and principled person, a gifted teacher, a loving family member and warm and dear friend. She was active in many poetry communities, including the Thursday Poets, Warren Wilson alumni, IAWA, local Salem and Massachusetts poet groups, and more. She participated in and co-ran several reading series. She was valiant in her fight against cancer, and in her political…
Aimee Suzara First Ultrasound of a Trickster What did you sound like, that first time? A flutter: the wings of a furious butterfly, thrum of a colibrí. Twice my heart’s speed, yours. A life-force undeniable. A wild new fish already swimming upstream, all swashbuckle and verve, all grit and ashé. Already my Santonilyo (1) playing in my waters: opening the way. (1) Santonilyo is the syncretized version of Santo Niño, a deity known to play in the waters and until current day, helps protect the people. The Santo Niño is seen as a significant figure in the Catholization…