“Being a woman (cis, trans, or otherwise) means that you grow accustomed to men and sometimes women, commenting about your body on a regular basis without provocation.
Walking While Fat and Female – Or, Why I Don’t Care Not All Men are Like That
I call. You’re stone. / One day you’ll look and find I’m gone. – Poetry of the Pashtun Women
[The landays] lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love… the couplets express a collective fury, a lament, an earthy joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation, a call to arms, all of which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.
Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day Coming home late from my daughter’s preschool’s Mother’s Day tea, a feast of banana-walnut muffins made by those who’ll, one day, discover elements Q and J or become Secretary of […]
Bad Mom Abroad
By Julia Connolly I got pregnant the week we moved to London, crawling out of my jet lag stupor long enough to make a baby. At 41 I was pushing it, but […]
Two Mothers Stranded in the World
by Terry Godbey She circles, distraught and loud, and like any expectant mother displays an unfortunate waddle. Behind her, a man emerges from the lake, shoes and shins dripping, holding her glistening […]
This Week, the Sirens Honor Mothers. Let’s Start with “Bells”
Bells by Julia Clare Tillinghast I dreamed my son was joining the army We were driving him there in a flood My mother-in-law and her daughters Were in the car with us crying […]
Prayer for a Field Mouse
Prayer for a Field Mouse by Pat Riviere-Seel Bless the gray mouse that found her way into the recycle bin. Bless her tiny body, no bigger than my thumb, huddled and numb […]
Autism Anniversary
By Julia Connolly Fifteen years ago today, 15 years ago right now, I learned my son has autism. For months, I’d explained his behavior away, telling myself he didn’t respond to me […]
Cheaper Than Therapy: Your Official Episcopagan Easter Message
By Susan Lilley As Bishop of the Episcopagan Church of America, I realized that in all the excitement of the spring rites of free-floating anxiety, intermittent joy, and sadness for the state […]
Observations Brought Back From The Zoo
by Marcia Aldrich Nothing is simple. Nothing is pure. Sorrow folds inside the wings of happiness. And, as Louise Bogan says, “At midnight tears run into your ears.” ••• Late last April, […]
The Gloria Sirens 