Xiaoly Li A Small Goddess This freshly store-made tofu we stumble upon, grassy, nutty, melts in the mouth. That purple corn, chewy, earthy— your favorite, the stubborn root woven deep in us. I don’t mind a pilgrimage to scattered shrines for specialties: Costco for wild mushrooms, plump with rain, and jackfruit chips that crackle—unleashed; H-Mart’s tilapia, silver-scaled for steaming, chives’ biting memory folded into dumplings. For you, these wheeled offerings— our second chance to lift the weight we carry. Redo those years— I was an ocean away when you learned to walk. Here, I pull this new green…
Author: Mom Egg Review
U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo Her Voice in the Wind Some days, I hear her. +++Not in dreams, +++but in the wind. It brushes past my cheek, +++carrying a lesson, +++a warning, +++a blessing. She speaks in birdsong, +++in the kettle’s whistle, +++in the way the light +++hits the sink. +++She’s not gone. +++She’s just quieter now. +++And I must lean in +++to hear her. U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a Zimbabwean-American poet, educator, and marathoner based between Boston and Lagos. She is the author of Soul Psalms (She Writes Press). Her work has appeared in MER and Write on the Dot. A …
Jane C. Miller I will burn with it I inherit a black mourning cap worn by my grandmother at 16 when her mother died. I am the only one it fits, such an ugly gift, its yarn rough as netted horsehair tied with a black ribbon, made by an unknown woman and passed down through generations to bury husbands, parents, children. Such intimate oppression my grandmother hid in a drawer. To throw it away, bad luck. When I put it on, I become grief’s severe matron, in my eyes the emptiness of frozen fields in Iowa. When crows…
Donna Vorreyer Boundaries A squeal rises from the garden: a rabbit caught on a wire fence while seeking a cluster of greens, the soft church of her body trembling as she churns her legs to wrench them free. When she escapes, she leaves behind a clump of downy coat. Her cry was like a child’s, small yet piercing, reminding me that I dwell forever in the country of mothers. Though my son has aged beyond its borders, this country demands allegiance. His need comes now through miles and screens, a call different from the rabbit, but just as…
Sara Wallace The Perfect Stage — “Be the Least in the Household of God,” Francis of Paola Come and watch me screw up, my son said. So, I went to his school’s concert but the music teacher put him in the back behind the piano, his face shadowed, hidden by the music stand. I sat there clapping for Brittney and tall wide Luna with her rough braid, for slight redheaded Asher and smiling Chip, for bongo drummers and violinists, for sopranos and bass players, my son just outside the lip of the spotlight, the black outline of his hair…
MER at AWP–All the Info! Off site. On Purpose. You’re Invited! Off Site. On Purpose. AWP 2026 Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 7:00 PM Westminster Hall, 519 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201 (Free Admission – Doors Open at 6:30 PM) SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present: Off site. On purpose. SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present “Off Site. On Purpose,” featuring many of today’s most inspiring women and nonbinary writers and poets! Join us for a night of life-affirming poetry on Wednesday, March…
Off Site. On Purpose. AWP 2026 Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 7:00 PM Westminster Hall, 519 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201 (Free Admission – Doors Open at 6:30 PM) SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present: Off site. On purpose. SWWIM, MER, NELLE, Whale Road Review, Perugia Press, & Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry present “Off Site. On Purpose,” featuring many of today’s most inspiring women and nonbinary writers and poets! Join us for a night of life-affirming poetry on Wednesday, March 4, 2026 at 7:00 PM (Doors open at 6:30 PM), Westminster Hall, 519…
Katie Naoum Mud Season The edges of the day thaw too quickly, become sharp, jagged, like my children’s drawings or their cries. My children. They are so very young, so beautiful and difficult. There are moments when new phrases they are testing, eyebrow raises, baby-teethed grins crack the icy shell of our monotony. But the days are mostly a slog in mudsucked boots. Haircuts, snacks, new pants. Demands for all things. Lucky that shorts can last two or even three seasons. Boundaries blur to a soft down. The same as the fuzz on the back of my youngest child’s…
Review by Sharon Tracey In Perforated, Chloe Yelena Miller’s second full-length poetry collection, the poet circles the center of things, observing and remembering. In her hands, words are gathered around portals between the outside and inside as well inside the body of memory, with places for language to land and embed in. Hands that light candles, drop coins in a collection box, mix olive oil and salt; hands that rest under the hand of a child. Hands that fill a jar with anything that needs a container, to be held. Inside these intimate poems, the poet celebrates the details…
Review by Elizabeth Paul Susan Ayres is a poet, translator, and lawyer who teaches at Texas A&M University School of Law. She is the author of Walk Like the Bird Flies, a chapbook that journeys through inner and outer landscapes. Ayres’ second chapbook, Red Cardinal, White Snow, explores intergenerational mental illness and family trauma. Dedicated to her mother and daughter, this collection provides glimpses into the lives of these women, both of whom lived with mental illness. It also brings readers into the narrator’s experience as a daughter and mother seemingly tethered to tragedy. Yet the links between mothers…