Robin McGee Burns Alternate Names for Heart Mom after Danez Smith diagram-collector (staple them together and you get a flip-chart animation) insurance-checker appointment-scheduler worrier cradler last-minute-stalling-in-the-kitchen-food-prepper buzzer-holder tropical-fish-in-the-fish-tank-watcher photo-documenter daughter breast-milk-stock-piler guilty-conscience-date-goer out-of-body-weak-kneed morning-rotation team member forgetter-of-appropriate-acronyms-(CICU? CPICU?)-wing-dweller take-your-own-mom-out-and-about-to-tourist-attractions-like-Pike-Place-Market-goer…
Mary Specker Stone Eclipse of the Super Flower Blood Moon Not even super moon can catch the toddler tossed in play whose leg the hard floor fractures. Fine China plate, broken moon can’t sleep. Ice cream moon melts in…
Christina Hennemann Oma Fine’s Moon Calendar At waning moon, Oma Fine planted potatoes and beets, her stubbly, purple mole trembling. She cut our hair at new moon so it would grow back thicker (my horsehair proof of her science),…
Natalie Solmer I Am a Great Lake My youth was Everclear spilling slicking the table, its decks of cards, the phones that didn’t exist in our pockets or hands but Euchre. We learned it in school playing in our…
Sarah Browning Borrowing Happiness from Tomorrow It’s so dry this year the sycamores are shedding their enormous leaves, palms of crackle and nerve littering the yard mid-August, while exhaust from futuristic mowers the city hauls from rec center to…
Jacquelyn Grant Brown For Black Mothers Who Can’t Consider Sleep Cuz the World Still Ain’t Safe Enuf Her son makes it home +++safely after the late shift only to find her there +++again, twisted deep into the contour her…
Genoa Yanez-Alaniz Severing Maria In the photo she texted her excessive and carmine uterus — sits inside a sterile dish Her motherhood noduled — dead-fleshed and disposed severed limb of life once divining deity of Coatlicue — vigil of body…
Julie Cyr Leda in the Gulf after the painting by Adam Miller When Deepwater Horizon exploded, Leda’s baby latched on as the waves became slick, the film refracting light into a false rainbow. Leda sat naked on a rock while…
Eileen Cleary Leaves & Blooms Soon, April. And those of us who’d frozen our fingers clothespinning children’s outfits into brightly colored popsicles, or who’d shoveled snow just before the town’s plow pushed the icy streets onto our driveways, or…
THE WAY WE WERE: Motherhood as a Catalyst for Change In her poem, “Learning Language,” Erin Armstrong writes, “Extinguished are the mornings where I rise / alone to my writing, my coffee, my sense of self. . .” The…
Laura Read Winged Victory When I walked up the stairs in the Louvre towards The Winged Victory, I cried as I told my son the story of when I brought my mom to see her and she wept and told…
Sunayna Pal My Infant’s Nails small but sharp scratch my chest trying to grab on like a fledgling learning to get its grip living this new life I start the trim on the thumbnail cut his skin instead he…