March 2016

Welcome to the March/April issue of Literary Mama!

I am spatched flat, / leeched and rasped / by the shape life now / will never take.

She is a wisp / of skin over hollow bones, / a ribcage like harp strings / holding her wild-beating heart, / scapulae jutting like vestigial wings, / fingers and…

But listen to me, going on. / It’s just that / the less you understand, / the more I want to tell you, / before you’re all gone.

Teach her what to do when she loses you. / Don’t say Heaven. You don’t believe it, / neither will she. Say anything but sleep.

You believe in fairies / and leprechauns. / You believe birds / can fly to space.

The Hard Tomorrow, a stunningly detailed black-and-white graphic novel, ponders over the “readiness” for parenthood. The answer is a complicated blend of politics and naïve belief, but it emerges in…

Ann E. Wallace’s debut collection of poems,Counting by Sevens, is, at first glance, about the wounds we all bear as humans. Some of these wounds are borne publicly, such as…

My mother didn’t meet the son I named Daniel until she was 72. She was living in the nursing home in Maine, and Jeff, 23, was visiting from California for…

The double-helix structure of DNA allows for replication, but yours has unwound, a single spiral staircase tapering off into a singular void. Rick refuses to uncouple, says having a genetic…

“The judgment one gets as a mother—I find that much harder to take than the judgment I get as an author. Maybe because I’ve had a longer time as an…