Short Call for Submissions: Revised Dates: Open for submissions until Dec. 7, 2025 Due to an overwhelming response, we are ending submissions on 12/7/25. Thanks for your understanding. The (Re)Birthing Room MER Online Folio Curated by Karolina Zapal For an MER Online Folio, “The (Re)Birthing Room,” seeks poetry and hybrid works exploring pregnancy, birth, and rebirth—the physical, emotional, and metaphorical spaces where new life, new selves, new worlds emerge. More info at https://merliterary.com/submit
Author: Mom Egg Review
Laura Johanna Braverman FULL MOON AND GALLOWAYS The farmer shows me a hollowing-in by the iliac crest, skin taut from the weight of the calf. ‘Soon –’ she says, ‘Next week is Vollmond.’ She brings out a box: puncher to tag the new little ear, braided-rope bracelets with ties, ‘Just in case.’ One of three cows has never labored before. During their confinement in the barn, I bring red apples from nearby trees, the ground, and the market shelf. I hold out the fruit in my palm. Between squares of teeth, the first bite makes a resonant crack –…
Allison Blevins, Author of Where Will We Live If the House Burns Down? Interviewed by Melissa Joplin Higley MJH – When and why did you first start writing poems? AB – I started writing poems after reading Teen Magazine as a girl (not a teen). The magazine had a poetry page in the back, and I loved the drama. My mother bought me a journal, and I filled and filled the pages. I still write much of my work in the same way now. MJH – Who are your main poetic influences? AB – I worked with…
Review by Mary Makofske From the title poem, “At the Redemption Center,” where the prosaic recycling of bottles and cans slides into “hope…for the redemption of us all,” Anne Sandor demonstrates her skill at turning words and situations over to examine their various facets. Moving easily through family relationships, gender norms, and the inner lives of children and adults, this debut poetry collection also brings precise language and empathy to examine public events. Sandor, more a poet of the “eye” than the “I,” prefers to fade into the background as she lets images, metaphors, and events speak for themselves.…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg The memoir has become a prominent and innovative literary genre, evolving from conventional prose to graphic and poetic forms, providing poignant and entertaining forays into the lives of authors with complex personal journeys (100 Demons, by Lynda Barry), even moving from illustrated page to stage as a musical experience (FUN Home, A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel). Nin Andrews, an acknowledged practitioner of the prose poem, has created an inventive and endearing series of episodes that comprise her childhood and coming of age, and introduces us to the eccentric dramatis personae of her challenging and…
Review by Megha Sood Pramila Venkateswaran, Poet Laureate Emerita of Suffolk County and author of multiple poetry collections, brings forth her latest poetry collection of fifty-one poems, Exile is Not a Foreign Word, which introspects the walls—both figuratively and metaphorically—that are divisive in nature in terms of religion, caste, color, creed, and make us poor in more ways than one. Her deep meditation on issues plaguing the world, along with brilliant life introspection through poetry, gives birth to this riveting collection. She delves into the social issues as she ruminates on the damage done by divisive rhetoric, injustice, and…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley New & notable, recent & forthcoming. Books are listed in order of publication date. Laurel Benjamin, Flowers on a Train, Sheila-Na-Gig, June 2025, poetry Flowers on a Train traverses a natural world both real and imagined, where we hunger for something beyond the boundaries of loss. Rich in crisp, lush imagery and filled with family, food, art, and music, the poems take us to local and far away places. Walking the neighborhood before surgery, we encounter a talking tree, hiking in a Sierra storm, the skies appear as a white bird, and listening to a…
MER announces its nomination of the following works for Pushcart Prize: Poetry Jennifer Barber – “Berlin” Rocío Franco – “My Daughter Wills Me Into Remission” Madeleine Mysko – “The Summer He Left” Carla Panciera – “In This Dream” Fiction Alyssa Cami, “Mother Tongue” Non-Fiction Helen Raica-Klotz, “All I’ve Got is a Photograph” All were originally published in MER – Mom Egg Review Vol. 23 (April 2025). Congratulations and good luck to the nominees!
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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