Kymopoeia by Tina Pocha
“Kymopoeia” by Tina Pocha They cut my breasts off. They want me to love, but they cut my breasts off. They gave me one earring. How can I be fair with just one earring? They say smile. I smile. They say smile. I smile. They say you are not smiling. I say, this is my smile. My son thinks I love his brother more. But I tell the Ayah to draw his bath and lay out his clothes. My son thinks I love his brother...
Margie’s Monologue by Thelma Virata de Castro
“Margie’s Monologue” by Thelma Virata de Castro (Excerpted from the full-length play Cookies for Prisoners) MARGIE (White housewife. Sixty.) When I got pregnant with Jude, I was so happy. Larry and I had already given up on having kids. Larry didn’t want to go to any hocus-pocus fertility doctors. I hit forty and I thought, “That’s it.” No baby for me. Our lives kept us busy, but I always...
Always, Every, Only by Susan Sarver
“Always, Every, Only” by Susan Sarver It only takes a half-hour three times a week to stay fit and a few vitamins every day are good plus a check-up every year, teeth every six months, unless you have kids with braces then it’s every four, sort of like smoke-detector batteries that were always every six months unless you track down the ones you only need to change every five years except when you have a child...
Shushed by Rebecca Roth
“Shushed” by Rebecca Roth The first person I (Shush!) is myself. We’re trying, I might say. But I can’t say. I could lose My job. So, I depend on you. On your public, privileged wars. And still more: on your private battles, private losses. Silence any open-eyed fear. Keep a white-knuckled lid on joy. Keep still: wait til you can’t deny; until then, deny! deny! deny!...
The Birth by Linda Ravenswood
“The Birth” by Linda Ravenswood The ones on four legs ran away. Her screams were a shock even to her. Though the mate had mated previously, he too kept in the outback. When the little one fell out from between her legs, she had no reason to smile and carry on with all of that laughing like she did, but she did it anyway. She picked him up; brought her mouth, over his nose, sucked out the clog, jettisoned red...
Birth Marker by Gerda Govine Ituarte
“Birth Marker” by Gerda Govine Ituarte Newborn son two days of life tattoo needle dips into ink and his ashes burns “ADAM” on to her arm skin stings babies gone from here sing lullabies to her. ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Gerda Govine Ituarte Artist Statement: Her work appeared in The Altadena Poetry Review Anthology, Coiled Serpent, Journal of Modern...
Movement by Deborah Staunton
“Movement” by Deborah Staunton I watched her eyes as they focused on the screen, her head, mannequin still, her lips a strained line. her body, motionless, mimicking my tiny lifeless unborn baby, willing her to move, just the flick of a finger, the drop of a shoulder, a barely discernible breath, just one sign that the small form on the screen could somehow reciprocate, the gift of movement, any movement....
Birthday by Shelley Blanton-Stroud
“Birthday” by Shelley Blanton-Stroud “No,” the doctor says when I ask, “Is everything all right?” His shiny bald head rises between my wide-spread knees, a perfect red balloon over the ball of my belly. Like a movie, I think, Demerol having its poetic effect. Numb below the waist, foggy above the neck, I watch grim-faced professionals race around the fluorescence, like ants disturbed, rolling machines,...
Wanting by Molly Beer
“Wanting” by Molly Beer The boy in purple moonboots thumps up to the gate howling “¡Mamí!” for hello. My boyfriend— “Mommy” to this orphan boy who knows no men—avoids my eye. We first came to this hogar, to Ecuador, to teach English: I want; you want; the boy wants; we all want. We were not expecting, or wanting, babies. We were not ready for such gaping need, for hunger at once wholly repulsive and...
At the Abortion Clinic by Katharyn Howd Machan
“At the Abortion Clinic” by Katharyn Howd Machan White poinsettias, drained of all their blood, adorn the waiting room table. Walk in, take a seat, pick up a magazine. On its cover pose a man and woman laughing into a book. Glance at the pictures on the walls. Study the frames, the webs of dust clinging to the corners. Near the window stands a Christmas tree draped with silver tinsel. You remember your...
The Ashsong by Kristi Carter
“The Ashsong” by Kristi Carter No fever brings the strange hands to place this bit in my mouth, it is the cold metal weight on my thin voice that brings me to fever. The sorrel waved its fleshy leaves at me as my sisters disappeared over the hill into the holler below. They are not the first to choose silence over change. Over the chance that an oratorio might burst forth from us with enough tremolo to hang...
Afterlife by Cassandra Lane
“Afterlife” by Cassandra Lane The Lynched Man’s Widow Mary feels the baby curling inside her, tighter and tighter, unbearable pain. She closes her eyes and prays for the coiled mass of limbs to dissolve. She and Burt had promised to raise this man-child together. Now, that Burt has been lynched, murdered, buried, his promises of a better future ring hollow. Mary wishes the fetus would stop feeding off her;...
Mother’s Wishbones, No Doubt by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal
“Mother’s Wishbones, No Doubt” by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal furculae with not a fragment of dried-up flesh or sinew to despoil their luster — the slew of them ranging in size from Cornish hen to turkey. Funny, I’d never noticed Mother extricate any, let alone strip them clean, secrete them somewhere long-forgotten. I stumbled across those old bones — took possession of the best of them, pried loose some of my own...
Vision by Jill Boyles
“Vision” by Jill Boyles She saw her mother at a garage sale on a spring blue morning chatting with a woman behind a card table. She closed her eyes and saw her mother’s eyes: translucid gray irises and lids bordered by brown eyeliner. The skin on her face soft and slightly fuzzy. She opened her eyes and saw her mother holding up a white blouse and imagined her saying to the woman, “Only a dollar for this?”...
Advice from Mother on Your One Less Day by Les Bernstein
“Advice from Mother on Your One Less Day” by Les Bernstein skip obligation’s inescapable sins wiggle out of pigeonholes enjoy happenstance and flux don’t forget to floss clog the clunky machinery of belief refuse templates of self ignore persistent memory elbows off the table airbrush your self portrait invite farcical pratfalls avoid hard labor’s invitation to bruise shoulders back stand up...
Autumn Melancholy with Birds by Margaret Chula
“Autumn Melancholy with Birds” by Margaret Chula Morning rain is tender, inviting me to slow down. How it taps the leaves before their final fall. Distant mountains obscured by fog are still there, even though I can’t see them. Will Mother die in autumn, hands nested in her lap, knuckles veined and buckled like the leaves of sugar maples? The bird feeder outside her window is empty. Once she told me she...
The Tulip-Flame by Chloe Honum
“The Tulip-Flame” by Chloe Honum My sister’s painting this: a hill, a lane that winds around the hill, and a wide field of tulips with a centered tulip-flame. She rolls her brush through gray and adds the rain in tiny flicks, glinting arrows of cold. My sister’s painting this: a hill, a lane. Last year our mother died, as was her plan. It’s simpler to imagine something could have intervened. The centered...
At Lock and Dam No. 10 by Kathleen Kelly
“At Lock and Dam No. 10” by Kathleen Kelly Twenty-two minutes without Coppertone, the first warning sign, a pinking around the eyes, the ears. The skin shimmers, opal-white. I stay afloat, my face lifting toward Iowa skies. A beginner. I was once afraid of the water, the skimming dragonflies, territorial mallards. A quick kick of my ankle jetties me farther. Away from shore. Farther away from her. Earlier,...
A Crown of Crows by Melissa Coss Aquino
“A Crown of Crows” by Melissa Coss Aquino I Upon her return she will be different. They gave her a clean slate, upon which to write a new life, for herself and me. New and transformed, no shadow of unmet hunger in her eyes; gone the bony grip, insatiable in its seeking and want. She will be clean and new and all things shiny like the plastic beads I used to love to wear in second grade. Will I be a reminder...
Leah by Lee Ingram
“Leah” by Lee Ingram There is sadness in the movement of my mother’s hands, a hesitation in the way she wraps her arms around my shoulders. There always has been. That hesitation dogs her steps, even basic movements like breathing, like sleeping. She walks gently so as to not disturb her sister, sleeping in the other room. She always has, like quiet is all she knows how to be anymore. We have the same whiskey...
I have not yet written a single page by daylight.
Harriet Jacobs
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