by Suzannah Gilman My mother’s mother lies on this bed. She sways her head and mumbles, eyes blank as buttons. I hold her hand, recite The Lord’s Prayer, which she taught […]
Front Seat
Walking While Fat and Female – Or, Why I Don’t Care Not All Men are Like That
“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.
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 […]
Mother’s Day 2014
On this, the seventh Mother’s Day my mother has missed, I am thinking about animals. Just a few days ago, my sister and I finally scattered some of her ashes out […]
The Neighbors’ Children
Leave it to a 7 year-old boy to explain to everyone how his parents had another baby after his mother had her tubes tied and his father had a vasectomy.
Palm Court
By Susan Lilley My treasured mom died in 2007; later that year I visited my daughter in Tallahassee, Florida where she was attending college. Together we found the place my mother lived […]
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 […]
“Liking Mike”–A Single Mom Dates Online
Liking Mike One night, after my teenage daughter Delaney kissed me and shut her bedroom door, I paid for a toe-in-the-water membership to a heavily populated dating website. Even as I […]
The Gloria Sirens 