@ Literary Mama

Have you read the most recent pieces at Literary Mama?

 

Columns

My mother was a philosopher. My sister and I grew up with philosophy books all over the house and grad students stopping by. We had a tiny little television that sat on our kitchen table, and we watched the evening news together and turned the sound down on the tiny little round button during the ads so we could discuss the day’s events. She is an intelligent, smart woman who admires the life of the mind. Birthing the Mother Writer by Cassie Steele Premo

 

We live at 64.84, 198 miles south. In winter we see the sun, even if it’s only for a little while each day. At the darkest time, we get three hours and forty-two minutes of light. In the summer we get twenty-one hours and forty-nine minutes. Most of us sleep through the dim midnight twilight, so it feels like a twenty-four hour day. Seven Minutes Less by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell

 

None of my friends’ houses contained rooms that were off-limits. Mine was also the only house where you had to take your shoes off to come inside. It was as though my mother actually feared the dirt and debris of daily living. She ushered my sister Angie and me out of the house every day to prevent our little messes. This worked out fine on Sunnyside Street where there were always other children to play with; but before I turned two we lived in a converted bungalow on a street, near the beach, which was deserted in winter. I’m told that before I was born and when I was a baby, our mother sent my sister out, even in the coldest months, for whole afternoons while she cleaned. The House on Sunnyside Street by Ona Gritz

 

 

Creative Nonfiction

I no longer beg, bargain, or scream for a third child. John is unyielding. The worst of it is that he’s right. My pregnancies were unrelenting tortures of nausea and starvation. The births were briefer traumas, but with more lasting physical effects. I’m often overwhelmed already, and we can barely afford the two we’ve got. He’s right, and because he is so indisputably right, I will never win this argument.     Good to Go by Sara McCanless

 

I had no recourse for my fears, no one to share them with. Sensing the roots of irrationality, I pruned my thoughts close to my heart, where they grew thicker and more tangled. Abbey was not my husband’s daughter; this baby would be his first child. None of my friends had similar situations. None of them had broken one family apart and jammed pieces of a new one around her child, hoping the edges didn’t cut. How to confide in them? How to confide in my husband, when I suddenly resented him and felt a cool detachment for his baby?    Memorial Day by Elizabeth Maria Naranjo

 

Fiction

Andy had grieved with her, but he was beginning to surface. He’d mention their son every once in a while, ask her if she remembered different parts of her pregnancy, the ultrasounds. He tried to make her remember.    Dégagé by Heather Caliri

 

She never draws Martin’s attention to the top of her closet, to the carton she keeps here, shoved well back on the shelf. This box is not an ordinary dull brown, but a pretty rose pink, with a purple print of giraffes and flowers. She taps its side gently, the way she might greet an old friend in passing, takes it down, and carries it into the bedroom.    Francesca by Cathy Carr

 

 

Literary Reflections

The psychic is down-to-earth and expensive. My husband, Richard, is young. He lives in London, and has not yet moved to the US, where he will meet me, or to Canada, where he will marry me. She tells him she will marry him. Prophecy by Heidi Reimer and its associated writing prompt by Heidi Scrimgeour

 

 

Poetry

Sneaking around the dog park
like some kind of puppy pervert … Impregnate me please by Shannon Hare

 

While wombside, your name was the color of spun glass,
blue bottles in the kitchen window, the color of milled soap… Renaming the Newborn by Molly Sutton Kiefer

 

Great kettles, mottled and held fast,
bricked into the city block. It will cling
to me, the wort, the bundles … Boulevard Brewing Co. by Molly Sutton Kiefer

 

I had a girl
a daughter who died inside … Anjali by Ashira Malka